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Joint Activities of the Research Unit

  • 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.

  • Virtual Public Lecture: Ho-fung Hung (Johns Hopkins University, USA): "Market Economy, Social Inequality, and Paternalistic State in China since the 17th-18th 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

Activities of Individual Projects

  • Presentation by Meron Zeleke at Apad Conference 2024 in Liège, 22.-24.05.2024: Employment of Migrant workers  in the Textile Industry in Ethiopia

  • 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

  • Presentation by Fabiana Kutsche at „Kolloquium zur Global- und Verflechtungsgeschichte“, University of Bielefeld, 24th January 2023

  • 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)

  • 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.

  • 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

  • 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.

This Research Unit is funded by the Volkswagen Foundation