The body is a central category in labour history – as a “tool” and site of production, a target of discipline, a marker of social categorization, a carrier of prices, an agent of resistance, and a locus of knowledge, experience, and emotion. By foregrounding the physical, social, symbolic, and historical dimensions of the body, the panel explores how labour and embodied experiences of coercion were structured, represented, and contested in medieval and early modern societies.
Focusing on specific labour activities and labour market dynamics, the panel explores how working bodies were shaped by and negotiated within broader economic systems (family or household/plantation/ransom economies), employer logics of control and efficiency, and epistemologies of reproduction. By bringing these aspects together, the panel offers a cross-analysis of how labour exploitation and bodily violence intersected with multiple dimensions of reproduction: the reproduction of social order (Lehner), of market logics (Ressel), of (non-)kinship ties (Peres), and of the labour force itself (Vidal).

Exploring case studies from the Dutch colonies in the 18th century, the North African coast in the 18th and 17th centuries, and the Latin Mediterranean from the 13th to the 16h centuries, the session spans a range of urban and rural environments, colonial and enslaved labour systems, and private and institutional settings. Each paper investigates the intersections between the (re-)producing body (for someone and/or something), the controlled body (regulated by someone and/or something), and the resisting body (of someone under coercive circumstances).

Key questions guiding the panel are:
•How were labour, dependency, exploitation, and (coerced) intimacies constructed and negotiated through bodily practices?
•What is the relation between shared (medical) knowledge about and interventions to the working body and labour coercion?
•In what ways did workers engage in bodily self-fashioning, and how were these processes shaped by markets?
•How did labour exploitation and bodily violence shape and intersect with different layers of reproduction?

By centering the body in the formation, maintenance, and dissolution of labour relations, the panel seeks to deepen the dialogue between labour history, the history of medicine, kinship studies, gender history, and the history of emotions.

This panel focuses on how organised labour responded to precarious employment.

Historically, being a businessman, entrepreneur, or trader was a role reserved for men. We know little about the
role played by women in this field. There is still a great deal of uncertainty and much to explore in the world of family businesses and workshops, both urban and rural (Martini and Bellavitis, 2014). We know that some women were able to carve out a niche for themselves as traders in activities not covered by trade monopolies (Solà, 2009:240). On the other hand, as retail trade became established, another type of intermediary grew in the sales process: dressmakers and haberdashers, or donators, capcers and merceres (in Catalonia) (Sarasúa, 1995:165; Solà, 2002:318). All of them were women entrepreneurs. The current proposal will study different populations in Catalonia, with the aim of highlighting women’s work related to textile manufacturing, with special emphasis on the activities of these women as entrepreneurs and businesswomen. In the constitution of commercial companies, we will analyse women’s activity as partners in business development and work activity; their own capital contributed to the commercial company; capital lent to their spouse, brother, etc.; we will observe the development of the business in the hands of women and their decision-making capacity regarding purchases, credit granted to customers, choice of collaborators, employees and apprentices (fadrí); multiple activities of the spouse or other partners versus the expansion of women’s roles; etc. To this end, multiple primary sources will be used: testimonies from contemporaries (Francisco de Zamora, Madoz, etc.), distribution of trade subsidies, industrial registrations, population registers, merchant guides, commercial almanacs, business sources, notarial protocols,
etc. The article will be structured as follows. After the introduction, there is a section on textile manufacturing in Catalonia. From here, we will focus on our first case study, the rural manufacture of lace and bobbin lace for 12 Catalan towns (18th-20th centuries). This section will follow the methodology developed by the Annales
School, which means that all the sources mentioned above and their possible under-recording will be analysed exhaustively. We wish to make an initial macro approach, in order to finally analyse specific trajectories in time and space. In the following section, we will focus on other textile manufacturers: hosiery factories (cotton and
silk), ribbons, bonnets, gloves, Indian fabrics, etc. This section will be approached with the aim of developing specific cases of women entrepreneurs, for which notarial sources (eras, wills, powers of attorney, post-mortem inventories) will be of great help.

Punishment has acted as an instrument of labour coercion, control and management throughout history. This panel addresses how practices of punishment and surveillance have facilitated, legitimised and interacted with practices of coercion in labour relations. Thereby, it offers a perspective on the variety of ways in which coercion in the realm of labour was connected to other modes of violence and control. The panel includes papers from different regions across the world – from sixteenth century Spanish to the nineteenth-century British empire and the late-twentieth century United States. It thus explores change and continuity in punishment and surveillance across time and space, and shows that most punitive practices were not tied to a specific labour regime, but instead could be mobilised in different contexts for similar purposes.

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Join us for the launch of Women’s Labour Activism in Eastern Europe and Beyond (UCL Press, 2025) – a groundbreaking, open access, collectively-written monograph that traces women’s struggles for better working and living conditions across Eastern Europe, Austria, Turkey, and internationally, from the late 19th century to the late 20th century.

Co-authored by Selin Çağatay, Mátyás Erdélyi, Alexandra Ghiț, Olga Gnydiuk, Veronika Helfert, Ivelina Masheva, Zhanna Popova, Jelena Tešija, Eszter Varsa, and Susan Zimmermann, the volume is the outcome of the ERC-funded project ZARAH: Women’s labour activism in Eastern Europe and transnationally, from the age of empires to the late 20th century, based at Central European University.

With the participation of authors of Women’s Labour Activism, who will share their experience of challenges and advantages of co-authoring a truly collaborative monograph.

The working group aims to build an interdisciplinary network of scholars studying labour migration from a historical perspective. Although migration currently receives great attention in political and academic debates, it is often discussed as a humanitarian emergency, a social and a security problem, but very rarely as a labour (history) issue. Similarly, research sympathetic to the struggles of migrants tends to denounce the violation of human and civil rights experienced by migrants but very rarely refers to the ways in which migration management policies have historically contributed to the creation of unfree and precarious working conditions. Our network seeks to generate scholarly debate about the interconnectedness of labour and migration history and stresses the importance of labour to analyse change in migration patterns and policies across time and space. We are interested in both empirical and theoretical analysis, and in various types of labour migration, perspectives, chronological and regional foci.

We invite papers addressing labour migration history including (but not limited to) the following topics of interest:

Labour mobility in domestic, regional and transnational policies and patterns
Intra-bloc and East-South labour migration in the Cold War context
Labour migration beyond normative and methodological nationalism
Organised migration schemes (e.g. “Guestworkers”) in a comparative perspective
Labour precarity and coercion in historical perspective
Entanglements between forced and voluntary migration
Methodological considerations and innovations in labour migration history
Historical shifts in intersections of gender, race, and class in migrant labour flows
The impact of migration in sending societies: Remittances and the financialization of migrants

The mining sector occupied a central role in shaping the economic, political, and social history of many countries throughout the 20th century. As a strategic industry, mining was closely tied to national development agendas, regimes of labour control, environmental transformations, and the consolidation of state power.

This panel aims to explore the labour, social, political, and environmental dimensions of the mining sector under dictatorial regimes during the 20th century. While we are particularly interested in European cases, we also strongly encourage contributions that examine similar processes in other parts of the world—such as Latin America, but we could consider other cases in Africa or Asia—to foster comparative perspectives and transregional dialogues.

We invite paper proposals that address, among others, the following topics:

– Labour regimes and working conditions; state violence and labour discipline; occupational health and safety;
– Industrial relations and collective action: trade unionism, strikes, worker mobilization, and their repression or negotiation by authoritarian regimes;
– The role of mining in economic and political planning under dictatorships: including its ideological instrumentalization in fascist, communist, or military regimes;
– The responses of dictatorial regimes to the environmental impacts of mining and the narratives of progress or sacrifice that justified extractive policies.
– We are especially interested in interdisciplinary approaches that bridge labour history with environmental history, political economy, social history, or the history of science and technology. Contributions may be based on local case studies, national analyses, or comparative and transregional frameworks.

Since at least the end of the 18th century, social reformers, labor leaders, organized workers, and political movements have promoted democratic control of the workplace, industry, and economic life as a crucial precondition not only for social justice and material security but also for political democracy more generally. In so doing, they have highlighted that when workers and employees lack effective voice at work and control over the labor process, their political participation and formal political equality is seriously curtailed more broadly. Indeed, many have argued that political democracy will fail to materialize or, where it existed, soon experience ‘backsliding’ should democratic rights over work, industry, and the economy be withheld or decline. Against this backdrop, intellectuals, political and trade union actors, and social movements proposed a wide range of theories as well as practical measures that underlined the participation of employees and labor in decision-making as a prerequisite for the sustainability of democratic rule. In light of the current attacks on democratic institutions, we believe that now is the time to re-think what role the improvement and expansion of employee participation in industrial and economic decision-making might play in the fight for the future of our democracies.
Today, growing fears of democratic erosion in the political sphere happen to follow on the heels of a general decline of economic democracy over the last decades. For this reason, we want to explore the role that ‘democracy’ has played in the thinking, organizing, and lived experiences of past and present-day individuals and movements pushing for greater control over individual workplaces, whole industries, and entire economies. Instead of concentrating on how workplace democracy has impacted economic performance, productivity, and employee satisfaction–the focus of much previous research–we want to go to the heart of our subject and ask: whether, how, and why democracy at work strengthens and improves democracy in a variety of other social spheres, from families and civic organizations to local communities, the nation state and the international arena? For this purpose, we are proposing a series of panels that go beyond the historical gaze of our working group’s previous activities.

Panel 3: Workplace Democracy in Times of Crisis: War, Reconstruction & Economic Transition

Organising worker resistance within empire, from the local to the transnational.

Maritime labor and precarity in colonial India.

This session includes three separate papers dealing with the trajectory of Emilio Gabaglio (1937-2024) as trade union leader. For nearly 50 year Emilio Gabaglio has been a key witness and actor of the transformations of European and International trade unionism. As former International Secretary of the Italian Confederation of Trade Unions (CISL) and later secretary general of the European Trade Union Confederation, his action and thought has marked the existing structures of European and International trade unions in a very specific way. This second session which will include some trade unionists who have collaborated with him from different positions. They will testimony about his specific conceptions of trade unionism and European integration.

This panel explores the ways in which soldiers have collectively organised to influence their working conditions, reform the military from within, and drive broader social change. A key focus is on situating soldiers’ collective action within the broader framework of labour history. The session will explore how military service intersects with labour rights, industrial action, and workplace organising, highlighting the position of soldiers as both military workers and state agents. Through examples from Sweden, the European Council of Conscripts Organisations (ECCO), and Vietnam War veterans, we can deepen our understanding of how soldiers have navigated the tensions between discipline, duty, and labour activism to shape their conditions of service and contribute to wider struggles for workers’ rights and social justice.

This session explores the condition and role of journeymen within artisanal cultures of pre-industrial guild systems. Particular attention is given to forms of collective association, the internal hierarchies between apprentices, journeymen, and masters, and the rituals that marked transitions between stages of the craft career. Journeymen emerge as key figures in shaping practices of solidarity, defending professional rights, and building collective identities—whether through legal and regulatory mechanisms or through symbolic rituals and representations. The analysis highlights how guilds functioned as instruments of social negotiation, spaces of spiritual and moral cohesion, and adaptable institutions responding to political, cultural, and economic transformations, with journeymen providing a privileged lens for understanding artisanal labor dynamics, collective organization, and the interplay between craft culture, political authority, and social change.

Matt Myers, University of Oxford, Water Workers, Ecological Systems, and the British State, 1870-present

Anna Sailer, CeMIS – Georg-August-Universität, Göttingen, Transplanting the Forest Workscape from Germany to India

Thomas Max Safley, University of Pennsylvania, The Ecology Of Production In Extractive Industry: Mercury Mining, The Mercury Trade And The Political Economy At Idrija In The Mid-Sixteenth Century

In our panel, we aim to discuss methodological, heuristic, and curatorial aspects of the shift in labour histories—from a focus on working-class politics and, more generally, on labour as a key element of class or group constitution—towards an emphasis on the politics of cultural practices. We understand workers’ culture not as a fixed ideological expression, but as an array of lived and staged practices—such as choirs, sport activities, emotionally charged commemorative events, amateur theatre or political festivals—that shaped class consciousness through the body and the senses. We are particularly interested in histories that connect or highlight the aesthetics of working-class politics, and that explore art as a form of social practice.
Our focus is primarily on Central Europe and the Baltic States during the loosely defined interwar period, while also considering longer processes and key turning points. We are especially interested in corpo-emotional modes of practice involved in building workers’ communities: their self-awareness, collectively created dreams and visions.
In our double panel, we will focus on the following themes:
(1) Body and emotions in workers’ culture: How was the workers’ movement energized by specific emotional dispositifs? How were feelings such as hope or anger manifested, regulated, and interpreted within workers’ cultural practices?
(2) Cultural practices as sites of political struggle: How can workers’ culture be understood as an alternative public sphere beyond Habermas’s model? How did workers’ associations cooperate with other collectives, youth organizations, educational initiatives, co-operatives etc. in producing shared cultural space? How did avant-garde art circles relate to the working class? How did they collaborate in practice, and what aesthetic models emerged from these interactions? How was culture a sphere for building larger anti-fascist alliances? And how was workers’ culture in interwar central Europe and the Baltic states shaped by transnational and global connections?
(3) Visibility of working class histories today: How is historiography of workers’ culture shaped by the geopolitical positioning of research and how does the “canon of Western labour history” operate within it? What methodological challenges, stereotypical frameworks, or biases affect the study of labour in relation to art, emotions, and performance? How can the embodied and emotional dimensions of labour history be made visible today—in archives, exhibitions, performances, and education—and how will such efforts challenge existing curatorial conventions and political imaginaries?

The DicoTrav project (Working Title) is a historical-critical, digital, and multilingual dictionary
devoted to the worlds of work in Europe from antiquity to the present day. Developed through a
collaboration between the Association française d’histoire des mondes du travail (AFHMT) and
the Società Italiana di Storia del Lavoro (SISLav), the project builds on a long-standing
historiographical dialogue between French and Italian scholarly traditions and aims to create a
shared research tool of broad scientific scope. However, it aims to encompass different European
areas and create a common research tool with broad scientific scope.
The dictionary will be published exclusively in digital, open-access format and will be available in
three languages (French, Italian, and English). Thanks to its digital architecture, DicoTrav will be
continuously updatable and open to future geographical and thematic extensions, fostering the
involvement of an expanding international network of scholars.
Addressed to a wide audience – from students and researchers to professionals interested in issues
related to work – DicoTrav responds to the growing need for a historiographical synthesis capable of
integrating recent developments in the field, such as global labour history, gender history of work
relations, forced labour studies, the social history of labour law, and the history of
deindustrialisation, among others. The project is structured around three main methodological
pillars: a source-based approach, with particular attention to historical contexts and temporalities; a
historiographical approach, emphasising scholarly debates and controversies; a linguistic approach,
aimed at reconstructing the genealogy of labour-related terms, their semantic variations, and their
circulation across different European contexts.
The presentation will outline the scientific objectives of the project, its digital architecture, and its
future perspectives, highlighting the role of DicoTrav as a tool for research, synthesis, and
dissemination in the history of the worlds of work.
Scientific Committee:  Corine Maitte, Nicoletta Rolla, Xavier Vigna, Pietro Causarano, Federico
Del Giudice, Nicolo’ Mignemi, Anna Pellegrino, Ferruccio Ricciardi, Matthieu Scherman, Virginia
Amorosi, Christel Freu, Vincent Demont.Book Presentation

This session focuses on histories of migrant women’s labour by exploring shifting boundaries between spaces of productive and reproductive labour in different parts of the Global North and the Global South. The session addresses interconnections between work happening in private and public spaces across the globe, and in spaces situated at the core and even beyond the margins of the world of work.

Workers’ education, organized by and for the working class, historically served multiple and overlapping purposes. It sought to compensate for the limited access to formal education available to many workers, offering a bridge to higher education and a pathway to social mobility. At the same time, it provided cultural empowerment, enabling the working class to create and preserve its own intellectual and cultural traditions. Just as importantly, workers’ education functioned as a foundation for political education, equipping participants with the skills to manage organizations, represent labor parties in parliaments, and engage with ideological debates. Across countries, these initiatives have taken diverse forms, including labor colleges, folk high schools, study circles, lectures, and correspondence courses.
Introducing a gender perspective deepens this picture. Gendered inequalities have historically shaped access to education and opportunities within the labour movement. Women workers often faced structural barriers, both in the workplace and in educational initiatives, limiting their participation and influence. At the same time, workers’ education provided crucial spaces where women could develop organisational skills, articulate feminist perspectives, and challenge patriarchal structures within both the labour movement and society at large. Considering gender perspectives highlights how educational practices not only advanced class-based empowerment but also intersected with struggles for gender equality.
Due to these varied aims, the sphere of workers’ education has often been characterised by conflict. Different branches of the labor movement have competed for control of institutions, while bourgeois forces sought to curtail or co-opt such efforts. Questions of funding and governance were frequent sources of tension. When examined through the lens of gender, these conflicts also reveal power struggles over whose voices and experiences were included or excluded from the educational agenda.
In this session, we aim to explore educational practices, teaching methods, and the cultural, political, and gendered significance of workers’ education. Contributions include case studies and comparative analyses that situate workers’ education in both national and transnational contexts, while also examining how gender relations shaped and were reshaped within these initiatives.

The working group aims to build an interdisciplinary network of scholars studying labour migration from a historical perspective. Although migration currently receives great attention in political and academic debates, it is often discussed as a humanitarian emergency, a social and a security problem, but very rarely as a labour (history) issue. Similarly, research sympathetic to the struggles of migrants tends to denounce the violation of human and civil rights experienced by migrants but very rarely refers to the ways in which migration management policies have historically contributed to the creation of unfree and precarious working conditions. Our network seeks to generate scholarly debate about the interconnectedness of labour and migration history and stresses the importance of labour to analyse change in migration patterns and policies across time and space. We are interested in both empirical and theoretical analysis, and in various types of labour migration, perspectives, chronological and regional foci.

We invite papers addressing labour migration history including (but not limited to) the following topics of interest:

Labour mobility in domestic, regional and transnational policies and patterns
Intra-bloc and East-South labour migration in the Cold War context
Labour migration beyond normative and methodological nationalism
Organised migration schemes (e.g. “Guestworkers”) in a comparative perspective
Labour precarity and coercion in historical perspective
Entanglements between forced and voluntary migration
Methodological considerations and innovations in labour migration history
Historical shifts in intersections of gender, race, and class in migrant labour flows
The impact of migration in sending societies: Remittances and the financialization of migrants