UNIVERSITY OF COLOGNE

• Summerschool of the Research Unit “The Production and Reproduction of Social Inequalities” in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
• 3rd Conference of the Research Unit "The Production and Reproduction of Social Inequalities" in Taipeh, Taiwan.
• Book Launch: Amrita Datta (Bielefeld University): Stories of the Indian Immigrant Communities in Germany, 16th April 2024, 6:00-7:30pm (CET). Global South Studies Center, Seminarroom 2.53, Classen-Kappelmann-Strasse 24, Ground Floor (hybrid event).
• Public Lecture: Kaveh Yazdani (University of Connecticut, USA): "Between Hired and Forced Productive Labor: Transition from Simple to Generalized Commodity Production in 17th and 18th Century Gujarat and Mysore?", 25th October 2023, 5:45-7:15pm (CET)
• Audio-visual station: Alter Voices - Covid Stories. An Intervention at the Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum, Cäcilienstraße 29-33, 50667 Köln, 18 May - 11 June 2023
• Panel: Global-African entanglement: transformation and continuity of social inequalities and labour practices. Panel Anth33 during the ECAS 9 Conference. Cologne 31 May - 4 June 2023.
• 2nd Conference of the Research Unit "Social Inequalities in the Gulf and Beyond" in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates and excursions to field sites in Abu Dhabi and Dubai.
• Virtual Public Lecture: Ho-fung Hung (Johns Hopkins University, USA): "Market Economy, Social Inequality, and Paternalistic State in China since the 17^th-18^th Century", 12th October 2022, 5:45-7:15pm (CET)
• Virtual Public Lecture: Opolot Okia (Wright State University, USA):  "The Chimera of Abolition: Forced Labor in Colonial British East and West Afrika, 1894-1939", 18th May 2022, 5:45-7:15pm (CET)
• Interview with the Research Unit conducted by the Division 7 Research Management of the University of Cologne. 23.02.2022, interview series 'UoC Insights'.
• Opening Conference of the Research Unit "The Production and Reproduction of Social Inequalities", 11.-12.11.2021, Conference Website

• Panel discussion organised by European Union Trust Fund for Africa (EUTF) and Center for Evaluation and Development (C4ED) in Brussesl, 11th March 2025: “Shared challenges, shared solutions: How do we tackle irregular migration together?” with Jonathan Ngeh
• Workshop co-organized by Michala Pelican, Jonathan Ngeh and the Ministry of Justice, Cameroon on “Gender Dynamics of the Trafficking in Person Campaign in Cameroon: Practicalities, Challenges and the way forward”, 25.06.2024 at the Ministry of Justice in Yaoundé, Cameroon
• Presentation by Meron Zeleke at the Leibniz University Hannover, History Department on "The Nexus between Employment and Empowerment: Industrial Jobs in Contemporary Ethiopia", 13.11.2024
• Presentation by Meron Zeleke at Apad Conference 2024 in Liège, 22.-24.05.2024: Employment of Migrant workers  in the Textile Industry in Ethiopia
• Presentation by Fabiana Kutsche at the University of Vienna at the 17. Workshop of the Research Cluster on Women’s and Gender History on “Feministische Akteur*innen im Kontext von Kolonialismus und Postkolonialismus”, 10.11.2023. https://fsp-fgg.univie.ac.at/aktuellesveranstaltungen/einzelansicht/news/einladung-zum-17-workshop-des-forschungsschwerpunkts-frauen-und-geschlechtergeschichte/.
• Presentation by Fabiana Kutsche, Ulrike Lindner, Jonathan Ngeh & Michaela Pelican at Symposium of Volkswagen Foundation Perspectives on Social Inequality and Wealth, 4.-5.10.2023: The Production and Reproduction of Social Inequalities: Global Contexts and Concepts of Labor Exploitation.
• American Council on Germany (ACG) Study Groups Discussion on Social Cohesion. “German discourses around critical race, post- and decolonial perspectives” with Jonathan Ngeh, Monica van der Haagen-Wulff and Stephan Milich. University of Cologne, 4th September 2023.
• Presentation by Michaela Pelican at Cologne Summer School on Migration, University of Cologne, 13.-31.8.23. Keynote: South-South / South-North migration: changing trajectories and migration regimes.
• Presentation by Michaela Pelican, Jonathan Ngeh and Tu Huynh at the DGSKA conference in Munich, 25.-28.7.2023: Confronting power asymmetry in knowledge production: lessons from intercultural collaborative research.
• Panel organised by Michaela Pelican and Jonathan Ngeh at the 20th IMISCOE annual conference in Warsaw, 3rd - 6th July  2023: Debates on “Human trafficking” and practices of coercive labor exploitation: Critical review of local and international perspectives.
• Presentation by Jonathan Ngeh and Michaela Pelican at the 20th IMISCOE annual conference: Strange alliances and dis/connections in the fight against trafficking in person: Cameroon to the Gulf states. Warsaw, 3rd - 6th July 2023
• Presentation by Tu Huynh at the Legacy of Slavery and Indentured Labor Conference III: Chinese Indentured Labor, Afterlife of ‘New Slavery’: Beyond a Black-White Binary in South Africa. Paramaribo, Suriname, 6-10th June 2023.
• Panel organized by Ulrike Lindner and Meron Zeleke at the ECAS conference in Cologne, 31.05.-03.06.2023: Global-African entanglement: transformation and continuity of social inequalities and labour practices (panel Anth33). Chair: Michaela Pelican; discussants: Anne Kubai, Cynthia Pizarro.
• Presentation by Jonathan Ngeh at the ECAS 9 Conference. Cologne 31 May - 4 June 2023: Discourses of “Human Trafficking”in Cameroon: Dis/Connections Between Local and External Perspectives.
• Roundtable discussion with Jonathan Ngeh, Chareston Thomas, Divine Fuh, Faisal Muhammed, Ndapewa Fenny Nakanyete, Stha Yeni and ShaNon Bobinger: Is there a future for African Studies in Europe? ECAS 9 Conference. Cologne 31 May - 4 June 2023
• Presentation by Jonathan Ngeh at Department of Social and Cultural anthropology, University of Münster: Strange alliances and dis/connections in the fight against trafficking in persons: the context of migration from Cameroon to the Gulf states, 10th May 2023
• Participation of Meron Zeleke Eresso and Michaela Pelican in the Grantees Meeting of the funding initiative "Knowledge for Tomorrow” of the Volkswagen Foundation, Naivasha, 3rd to 6th April 2023: https://www.volkswagenstiftung.de/en/news/news/african-scientists-create-knowledge-tomorrow.
• Presentation by Jonathan Ngeh at the Comparative & International Education Society (CIES) Conference: Confronting power asymmetry in knowledge production: lessons from intercultural collaborative research. Washington DC, 14th February 2023
• Presentation by Fabiana Kutsche at „Kolloquium zur Global- und Verflechtungsgeschichte“, University of Bielefeld, 24th January 2023
• Presentation by Michaela Pelican, Tu Huynh and Jonathan Ngeh in the seminar L’École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS): Decolonising anthropological research practices. Paris, 12th January 2023
• Poster Presentation by Jonathan Ngeh and Michaela Pelican at the forum „Corona Crisis and Beyond“, Volkswagen Foundation Hannover, 5th-7th December 2022: Communication during and after Covid-19: (re)producing social inequalities and/or opportunities among African migrants in the United Arab Emirates and China.
• Presentation by Fabiana Kutsche at the annual conference of the German Labour History Association, titled “Arbeit/Zeit. Umkämpfte Beziehungen und umstrittene Deutungen im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert“, at Museum der Arbeit Hamburg, 3rd-5th November 2022, (Conference report: https://www.hsozkult.de/conferencereport/id/fdkn-134426?language=en)
• Presentation by Fabiana Kutsche at the annual workshop of the PhD Network “Regimes of Inequality. Past and Present”, Fribourg/ Schweiz, 13th-15th October 2022, (https://www.unifr.ch/histcont/de/studium/doktorat/regimes-of-inequality/).
• Lecture by Jonathan Ngeh at the Centre for Development Research, University of Bonn, Bonn International Graduate School for Development Research (BIGS-DR) interdisciplinary course.10th October 2022:  "Inclusion and exclusion in knowledge production: lessons from intercultural collaborative research."
• Presentation by Jonathan Ngeh in the symposium "Uncertain mobilities" at the Department of Sociology, University of Siegen. 8th October 2022: Ambivalence and the gendered dimension of human trafficking in cross border mobility".
• Presentation by Fabiana Kutsche at the bei der AHRC Conference Hybridity in Cambridge, UK, 19th - 22nd September 2022.
• Presentation by Jonathan Ngeh in the "International lecture series: meet our international researchers" at the University of Cologne. 13th July 2022: "Confronting power asymmetry in knowledge production: lessons from intercultural collaborative research."
• International Workshop by Ulrike Lindner and Nicholas B. Miller on Plantation Knowledge, 15-17 June 2022.
  • Keynote (hybrid) by Richard B. Allen (Framingham State, Massachusetts): Transcending the Tyranny of the Particular in Plantation Labor Studies, 15 June 2022.
• Presentation by Jonathan Ngeh in the Panel "Activism, hope and future horizons on the African continent", Annual Conference of the Swedish Anthropologial Association (SANT), Gothenburg, 29th April 2022: "Migration and human trafficking in the Global South: Cameroon to the Arab Gulf States."
• Presentation by Fabiana Kutsche at „Kolloquium zur Geschichte der Arbeitswelten“, organised by the Friedrich-Ebert Foundation & Hans-Böckler Foundation, 22nd November 2021
• Presentation by Jonathan Ngeh and Michaela Pelican in the Panel "Decentering Universities: Transnational collaborative research – biases, spaces, challenges”, Conference of the German Anthropological Association (DGSKA), 28th September 2021: Confronting Power Asymmetry in Knowledge Production: Lessons from Intercultural Collaborative Research.
• Seminar taught by Ulrike Lindner and Michaela Pelican on Inequality for M.A. students of History and Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Cologne, Summer Semester 2021.
  • Inequality Seminar Course Outline.
  • Review and Take Aways for the Research Unit.
• Presentation by Michaela Pelican and Jonathan Ngeh in the lecture series "Sixty Minutes in Ethnography, Theory, Anthropology", University of Cologne, 14th July 2021: The production and reproduction of social inequalities: global contexts and concepts of labor exploitation.
• Roundtable Discussion with Michaela Pelican, Amrita Datta, Jonathan Ngeh, Ratna Mani Nepal and Habibul Khondker, NIICE Global Conclave 2021, Nepal Institute for International Cooperation and Engagement, 25th June 2021: Impacts of the Pandemic on Transnational Migration.
• Panel Discussion with Ulrike Lindner, Jonathan Ngeh and Michaela Pelican, 27th October 2020: Remembering Spanish Flu during Covid-19: Reinforcing Existing Inequalities or Opening up New Opportunities? Moderation: Amrita Datta, Web Talk Series: Corona Conversations: Mobility in a (Post)Covid Future.
• Guest lecture of Jonathan Ngeh in the World Science Café, 13th February 2020: Migration & Human Trafficking in the Global South.
• Guest Lecture of Meron Zeleke at the GSSC, 29th May 2019: Sisters on the Move: Ethiopia’s Gendered Labour Migration Milieu.

This Research Unit is funded by the Volkswagen Foundation