1st Conference of the European Labour History Network (ELHN)

Location: 

Campus Luigi Einaudi (CLE) of the University of Turin Address: Lungo Dora Siena, 100 10153 Turin, Italy

The European Labour History Network(link is external) (ELHN) is pleased to announce its first conference from 14-16 December 2015 at the University of Turin facilitated and hosted by Stefano Musso (President of the Società Italiana di Storia del lavoro/SISLav – Italian Society of Labour History).

The ELHN was founded in October 2013 in Amsterdam as a network of labour historians in order to bring together scholars with different institutional backgrounds (institutes, associations, archives, journals, study groups, individual researchers, etc.) and serve as an umbrella organization for smaller working groups with specific topics and tasks.

In accordance with the decisions of the foundation meeting of the ELHN, the first conference of the network will be structured differently to other comparable scholarly conferences and will also provide the possibility to gather colleagues from all over Europe in order to work on specific common projects concerning European Labour History. Therefore, the main part of the conference will be dedicated to ELHN Working Groups that will themselves decide on their specific agenda during the conference. The individual working groups will be responsible for drafting their own agenda during the conference. For further information please contact the coordinators of the respective working group.

Working Groups

· Labour Movements and Migration (Coordination: Stefanie Prezioso, stefanie.prezioso@unil.ch(link sends e-mail))

· Feminist Labour History (Coordination: Silke Neunsinger, silke.neunsinger@arbark.se(link sends e-mail); Leda Papastefanaki, lpapast@uoi.gr(link sends e-mail); Susan Zimmermann, zimmerma@ceu.hu(link sends e-mail))

· Long-term History of Remuneration (Coordination: Leda Papstefanaki, lpapast@uoi.gr(link sends e-mail); Michel Pigenet, michel.pigenet@univ-paris1.fr(link sends e-mail))

· Pre-Industrial Labour History (Coordination: Andrea Caracausi, andrea.caracausi@unipd.it(link sends e-mail); Corinne Maitte, corine.maitte@univ-mlv.fr(link sends e-mail))

· Labour in Imperial History (Coordination: Yann Beliard, yann_beliard@yahoo.fr(link sends e-mail); Gareth Curless, G.M.Curless@exeter.ac.uk(link sends e-mail))

· Free and Unfree Labour (Coordination: Christian de Vito, christian.devito@gmail.com(link sends e-mail))

· Factory History (Coordination: Görkem Akgöz, gorkemakgoz@yahoo.com(link sends e-mail))

· Industrial Heritage (Coordination: Christian Wicke, Christian.Wicke@rub.de(link sends e-mail))

· Health at Work (Coordination: Nicolas Hatzfeld, nicolas.hatzfeld@gmail.com(link sends e-mail))

· Labour under State Socialism (Coordination: Adrian Grama, Grama_Adrian@ceu-budapest.edu(link sends e-mail))

· Labour History Journals (Coordination: David Mayer, David.Mayer@iisg.nl(link sends e-mail))

Contact for general information

Information on the organizational details of the conference (conference fee, preliminary programme, etc.) will be published within the upcoming months. If you want to visit the conference or keep updated on the ELHN, please contact:

Astrid Verburg (IISG): ave@iisg.nl(link sends e-mail)
Lukas Neissl (ITH): ith@doew.at

Call for sessions and papers on Labour and Working Class History for the European Social Science History Conference (ESSHC), Valencia, 30 March-2 April 2016

From 30 March-2 April 2016 the 11^th European Social Science History Conference will take place in Valencia (Spain). The ESSHC brings together scholars interested in explaining historical phenomena using the methods of the social sciences. The conference is characterized by a lively exchange in many small groups, rather than by formal plenary sessions. It is organized in a large number of networks that cover specific fields of interest.

One of the largest networks is Labour. We think that progress in Labour History is being made by analysing global developments in labour relations and labour struggle, including the influence of these global developments on local cases. It also remains essential to take into account besides class other constituent elements of working class identities, like gender, ethnicity, religion, age and nationality.

At the previous network meeting (Vienna 2014), some participants suggested that there was a need to take stock of the current state of the art. Therefore, we aim to organize four ‘Special Sessions’ entitled ‘Labour History: where do we stand?’. If you wish to propose a (historiographical, methodological, or other) session for this series of sessions, please use ‘Special Session’ as a subtitle to your sessions. If your panel will not be selected for the ‘Special Session’, we will of course take it into consideration for our regular sessions.

Apart from the abovementioned ‘Special Sessions’, the Labour History Network welcomes any other session or paper proposal dealing with all topics and periods in labour and working class history. During the selection of proposals, the coherence of sessions will be an important criterion. Therefore, propositions of full sessions with three to five papers will be easier to accommodate in the conference programme than single papers. Most sessions choose the panel format, but other types of sessions are encouraged. We have a preference for sessions with a comparative character, geographically and/or chronologically. Also, we advise you to seek alliances with other ESSHC-networks and propose joint sessions. We heartily encourage young scholars, such as PhD and master students, to involve in organizing sessions within the Labour Network. To encourage this, the Jan Lucassen Prize for the best paper at the ESSHC of a junior scholar (first awarded in Vienna in 2014) will be awarded (see http://esshc.socialhistory.org/award).  

Proposing sessions or paper only works by pre-registering on our website. To propose a panel session (2 hour timeslot): panel organizers need to pre-register for 3 to 5 participants. Add full names and addresses of all paper authors, and of a chair and/or commentator. To propose an individual paper: pre-register through the conference website, indicating ‘Labour’ as your network of preference. See for full details: http://esshc.socialhistory.org/guidelines. The deadline for proposing abstracts is 1 May 2015.

Further information on the ESSHC is available from the conference website at http://esshc.socialhistory.org/. For specific questions about the Labour History Network, please contact the chairs: Christian G. De Vito (christian.devito@gmail.com), and Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk (elise.vannederveenmeerkerk@wur.nl).