Social and Labour History News

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University of Geneva, September 18-19 2025

How have workers' bodies been protected in hazardous working environments? Masks, gloves, goggles, helmets, ventilators, fume hoods, radiation detectors, shields, and fuses are just some of the devices deployed to safeguard health and ensure safety in dangerous spaces. Beyond their materiality and functionality, they carry with them the stories of technical innovations, workers' resistances, social transformations, and adaptations to toxic and polluted environments. They also reveal the complex trade-offs involved in the governance of risks, always marked by tensions between industrial productivism, health preservation, and social justice, between assigning responsibility to individuals and to collectives, and between the temporalities of accidents and chronic illness. What can these objects teach us about the strategies that past and present societies have adopted to balance protection and exploitation, technical progress and bodily vulnerability, and the impacts of industrialization on public health and the environment?

The international conference Protecting Bodies at Work: Technical Devices, Materialities of Health, and Political Imaginaries aims to explore the history of health technologies from the Middle Ages to the present in workplaces, urban areas, and colonial contexts. Through multidisciplinary and transnational perspectives, this conference will investigate how health-related objects and devices have both shaped and been shaped by social, cultural, scientific, and industrial dynamics. We invite researchers from all disciplines to submit original contributions in the field of occupational health and environmental health, focusing on the materiality, symbolic significance, circulation, uses, and disuses of sanitary objects.

Imaginaries of Risk and Prevention
Health protection devices are more than practical solutions; they embody a complex interplay of materiality, scientific knowledge, and social imaginaries. Designed to address health concerns, they carry beliefs, values, and norms, reflecting the ambitions and contradictions of their time. Inspired by Gilbert Simondon’s notion of technical objects as mediators between humans and their environment, and the works of Sheila Jasanoff, Soraya Boudia and Nathalie Jas on how technologies co-construct societal values and power structures, this theme examines how health-related objects have been perceived over time. How do they symbolize concepts like “healthy work,” “clean air,” “industrial hygiene,” or “protected environment”? How do they reflect tensions between prevention and productivity, innovation and inequality? Who are the actors and institutions promoting these devices? Moving beyond a functional analysis, this theme explores objects as reflections of broader social, scientific, and political transformations.

Circulation of Objects and Reconfiguration of Space
Health protection devices can be seen as tools for conquering spaces deemed dangerous, hostile, or unhealthy, often designed for multiple uses. These devices act as "boundary objects," crossing and linking distinct realms such as workshops, hospitals, urban spaces, and natural environments. What knowledge, practices, and narratives accompany these circulations? How are these devices transformed or reinterpreted as they move between spaces or across national and cultural borders? This theme invites contributions exploring not only their circulation but also how their transnational movement reveals flows of ideas, knowledge, and techniques while shaping local and global public health norms, working conditions, and environmental challenges.

The Politics of Objects and Negotiated Uses
Health devices are deeply embedded in power dynamics. Imposed as solutions to industrial, epidemic, or environmental risks, they reflect sanitary norms advanced by employers, medical professionals, hygienists, or states. Yet, they also face resistance, reappropriation, or rejection. This theme explores these tensions, examining how such devices function as both instruments of control and catalysts for social change. How are these devices introduced and legitimized? How do workers or targeted populations perceive and adapt them in their daily lives? How do they reshape work routines or individual and collective relationships with health and the environment? By studying their uses, appropriations, or rejections, this theme sheds light on the power relations surrounding health devices and how they redefine interactions between employers, workers, scientific institutions, regulatory bodies, and the public, revealing the ongoing tensions between bodily health, productivity, social justice, and environmental health.

Submissions:

Proposals should include a brief description of the research question(s) and the sources to be studied (300–500 words), and a short biography (150 words).
Contributions in French or English are welcome, and those focusing on non-European contexts are particularly encouraged.

Submission Deadline: March 1, 2025

Send your proposals to: veronique.stenger@unige.ch, yohann.guffroy@unige.ch, bruno.strasser@unige.ch

Références principales / Main References :
1. Boudia, Soraya, and Nathalie Jas, editors. Powerless Science? Science and Politics in a Toxic World, Berghahn Books, 2014.
2. Bruno Anne-Sophie, Geerkens Éric, Hatzfeld Nicolas, Omnès Catherine (dir.), La santé au travail, entre savoirs et pouvoirs (19e-20e siècles), Rennes, Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2011
3. Greenlees Janet, When the Air Became Important: A Social History of the New England and Lancashire Textile Industries, Rutgers University Press, 2019.
4. Guignard, Laurence, et al., éditeurs. Corps et machines à l’âge industriel. Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2011.
5. Jarrige, F. et Le Roux, T. La Contamination du monde. Une histoire des pollutions à l'âge industriel, Paris, Le Seuil, 2017.
6. Jasanoff Sheila, Sang-Hyun Kim (ed.) Dreamscapes of Modernity. Sociotechnical Imaginaries and the Fabrication of Power, University of Chicago Press, 2015.
7. Moriceau, Caroline, Les douleurs de l'industrie: L'hygiénisme industriel en France, 1860-1914, Paris, Editions de l'Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, 2010.
8. Rainhorn Judith, Blanc de plomb. Histoire d'un poison légal, Paris, Les Presses de Sciences Po, 2019.
9. Rosental Paul-André (dir.), Silicosis. A World History, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017.
10. Rosner, David, and Gerald Markowitz, eds. 1989. Dying for Work: Workers’ Safety and Health in Twentieth-Century America. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
11. Sellers Christopher, Hazards of the job: from industrial disease to environmental health science, Chapel Hill and London, University of North Carolina Press, 1997.
12. Weindling Paul (ed), The Social History of Occupational Health, London, Croom Helm, 1985.

APH Conference, Antwerp, 18-20 June 2025

In the light of current geopolitical constellations, the contemporary resonance of political history seems more relevant than ever. At the same time, the subdiscipline of political historiography has struggled to maximize its global relevance and to overcome its own historical biases. One of the longstanding critiques of the field has targeted its elitist character. It was written by North Atlantic elites about North Atlantic elites, about the institutions they had created and the struggles they waged. New forms of history-writing that came into being since the last decades of the nineteenth century were meant to be more democratic alternatives to political history. When political history was reinvented at universities in the North Atlantic world since the 1990s, this reproach of elitism was addressed. ‘The political’ which became the object of the new political history was not the realm of the rich and mighty, but involved all aspects of life in which power relations are somehow negotiated.

Still, this renewal of political historiography largely took place within the boundaries of the North Atlantic world, and therefore tended to replicate its fundamental paradigms. This did not exclude a growing interest for colonization and decolonization as political processes, but the subdiscipline did hardly question its origins in an era of colonialism, and the stamp it still carries from them. The decolonization of history-writing, therefore, has mainly taken place outside the ‘new political history’, even if it is intrinsically a political undertaking. Subaltern studies, gender history, new imperial history, area studies are some of the fields where the decolonizing efforts have been made – much less so in political history strictly speaking.

The aim of this conference is precisely to catch up with this delay, and to ask what it can mean to decolonize the field of political history. Should it only mean that we study processes of political decolonization, or does such an approach, on the contrary, perpetuate the focus on the colonizer? Should decolonizing political history entail a focus on pre-colonial political structures and actors, and how they survived during and/or after the colonial period? Or should it also make us question the ways in which we tackle political history in the North Atlantic world, both in modern and early modern times? Is every attempt to view political history from the perspective of non-hegemonic groups a form of historiographical decolonization? And if we answer positively to that last question, wouldn’t that devalue the term decolonization as such? Is ‘decolonization’ the most appropriate paradigm to renew the field of political history, or do we need other concepts?

Rather than theoretical answers to these questions, we expect to gain insights in this matter through empirical and methodological approaches. We hope to receive papers in which authors present the results of their historical research through the lens of these questions, and by doing so reflect on the possibilities and the limits of a decolonizing approach for political historiography. Of particular interest are papers in which the methodological and infrastructural challenges for this approach are being tackled. Questions that have been at the core of other subdisciplines deserve to be treated from a political history perspective. What kind of sources should we use to uncover power relationships in nonliterate societies? To which degree and in which ways can we use concepts from North Atlantic societies to describe pre-colonial political realities? How can we overcome language gaps? Which contributions can scholars from other disciplines offer to the decolonization of political history? How can we stimulate collaboration between scholars from
different parts of the world in order to genuinely practice what Carola Dietze has called a “history on equal terms”?

We welcome proposals both for individual papers and for full panels (3-5 papers). These panels can be dedicated to specific regions, periods and/or topics, or they can focus on conceptual or methodological challenges. Potential titles of panels include “Decolonizing the Cold War”, “The persistence of pre-colonial political structures”, “Decolonial epistemologies”. We encourage the submission of panel proposals which do not exclusively consist of presenters from the North Atlantic, and we would be glad to receive proposals in which decolonial perspectives are applied to ongoing conflicts. We expect the proposals in English, but we promote multilingualism and linguistic flexibility during the panels.

Doctoral students and junior scholars are warmly encouraged to submit proposals. For doctoral scholars whose proposals are accepted, a preparatory webinar will be organized in spring. In this preparatory seminar, first drafts can be discussed, and suggestions with regard to the presentations will be offered.

Paper proposals should not exceed 500 words. Panel proposals should contain, moreover, an introduction of maximum 500 words, in which a rationale is given for bringing these specific papers together. Please send your proposals by 10 February at the latest to marnix.beyen@uantwerpen.be. The organizers will put everything to work to make the conference affordable and accessible for all participants.

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
Roland Ndille (Buea University), Jihane Sfeir (Université Libre de Bruxelles), Musa Sroor (Birzeit University), Adriana Salay (Universidade de São Paulo)

ORGANIZING COMMITTEE:
Marnix Beyen (UAntwerpen, Margot Luyckfasseel (UAntwerpen), Burak Sayım (UAntwerpen), Jan Schmidt (KULeuven), Jihane Sfeir (Université Libre de Bruxelles),

SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE:
Anne-Sophie Gijs (UCLouvain), Gillian Mathys (Ghent University), Roland Ndille (Buea University, Cameroon), Adriana Salay (Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil), Roschanack Shaery-Yazdi (UAntwerpen), Musa Sroor (Birzeit University, Palestine)

https://www.uantwerpen.be/en/conferences/how-to-decolonize-political-hi…

by Christopher D. E. Willoughby

Medical science in antebellum America was organized around a paradox: it presumed African Americans to be less than human yet still human enough to be viable as experimental subjects, as cadavers, and for use in the training of medical students. By taking a hard look at the racial ideas of both northern and southern medical schools, Christopher D. E. Willoughby reveals that racist ideas were not external to the medical profession but fundamental to medical knowledge.

In this history of racial thinking and slavery in American medical schools, the founders and early faculty of these schools emerge as singularly influential proponents of white supremacist racial science. They pushed an understanding of race influenced by the theory of polygenesis—that each race was created separately and as different species—which they supported by training students to collect and measure human skulls from around the world. Medical students came to see themselves as masters of Black people's bodies through stealing Black people’s corpses, experimenting on enslaved people, and practicing distinctive therapeutics on Black patients. In documenting these practices Masters of Health charts the rise of racist theories in U.S. medical schools, throwing new light on the extensive legacies of slavery in modern medicine.

https://uncpress.org/book/9781469672120/masters-of-health/

Université du Québec à Montréal, 14-15 November 2025

In 1976 the Canadian Committee on Labour History (CCLH) launched its journal Labour/Le Travail, hoping to “foster imaginative approaches to both teaching and research in labour studies through an open exchange of viewpoints.” With the fiftieth anniversary of this event approaching, scholars, activists, unionists, and workers are invited to convene in the spirit of this tradition to exchange views and to consider new and renewed imaginative approaches to the study of labour and the working class.

Labour/Le Travail was founded in the mid-1970s amidst an apparent crisis in capitalism that can, in hindsight, be seen as a key moment of transition. In a period of stalled economic growth characterized by high inflation, unemployment, and a pattern of deindustrialization pushing production towards low-wage, less unionized jurisdictions, the nascent intellectual project of neoliberalism proposed solutions that would free capital from the regulation of the state and from the concessions won by the labour movement in the decades following World War II. Yet this was not the only vision of the future animating this historical conjuncture. This was also an era in which a wide array of social and political movements, organized labour among them, mobilized against inequality and oppression in their many forms and for a more just, sustainable, democratic, and humane world. Though there were tensions and contestations within and between these movements, they did create numerous local, regional, national and transnational networks of solidarity. It was in this milieu that Labour/Le Travail began its intellectual and political project, opening its pages to a diversity of analyses of the history of working-class life, culture, politics, and struggle with the conviction that such studies were of pressing relevance to the present and the future.

Fifty years later, the journal carries on its work in a context that is in some ways very different, but in others strikingly familiar.  Union membership and power has unquestionably declined, and yet a new generation of activists has emerged, in labour and other social movements, continuing the fight for social justice in a changed set of circumstances. These activists confront a capitalist order that, while faced once again with inflationary challenges, is transformed in important ways – a transformation that was already underway in the mid-1970s. Financial capital has superseded industrial capital as the principal agent of accumulation in Canada and other Western countries. With its distance from the site of production, finance capital is better positioned to evade workers’ collective resistance and, more broadly, from the legislative restraints of the state. This is particularly the case in the private sector, where the strategies of finance capital have been most directly imposed, but workers in the public sector, too, have struggled against a neoliberal logic that, using the public debt and the globalized competition to attract capital as imperatives, demands austerity.

If the social and intellectual relevance of labour and the labour movement was not in doubt in the context of the mid-1970s, today this relevance is no longer self-evident. It would be worthwhile, then, for researchers and activists to gather to revisit, reconsider, and, potentially, affirm the significance of labour history/studies. Why, fundamentally, does labour still matter? 

In recognition of the journal’s upcoming 50th birthday, the conference committee seeks proposals from researchers, activists, and public history practitioners for panels and papers that explore the past, present, and future of labour and labour studies. Questions and topics might include:

Why does labour history and labour studies – including in the domain of public history –  matter in our contemporary moment? What have been the contributions and the shortcomings of the past half-century of work in labour history/studies? How do we write about labour during a time of crisis and opportunity for labour and the left? How can issues of the past and present be reassessed in response to current challenges?

• What lessons does the study of past workers afford workers in the present as they confront an array of economic, social, political, environmental and other challenges? Conversely, how can current working-class struggles inform our understanding of the working-class past?
• How does context matter in our studies of labour and the working class across time and space? We especially invite panels that consider a theme in labour history/studies compared across national, regional, temporal, racial, linguistic, gendered, colonial or other contexts. How have labour, the left, and social movements worked together – or worked at cross purposes? What lessons about coalition-building (or its failure) can we take from the past?
• What can labour scholars learn from public history practitioners? How can scholars, teachers, and public history practitioners effectively collaborate? How can university researchers support the work of community groups and agencies involved in memory work?
• How can labour history/studies help us understand the evolution of political movements on the left and right alike? How can we deepen our understanding of the appeal of right-wing and far-right politics to working-class constituents?    

Submit a proposal:

Proposals for presentations, panels, or round tables can be submitted in English or French before 14 March 2025. Proposals, including a title, up to 250 word summary of the presentation, and up to 150 words biography of the presenters, should be submitted using this link:

https://forms.gle/tBaf5uz6fzMoDAYQ9

Travel subsidies:

Some funding will be available to subsidize travel expenses for students, precariously employed, or anyone else facing financial barriers to participating in the event.

Questions? info@cclh.ca

Organizing Committee:

Edward Dunsworth, Kassandra Luciuk, Benoit Marsan, Kirk Niergarth, Martin Petitclerc, Camille Robert, Joan Sangster  

by Jim Tomlinson

This book offers a new understanding of the main economic and political trends of 20th-century Britain, through the lens of Churchill's early career and approach to industrialisation.

Shedding fresh light on Churchill's political endeavours between 1900 and 1922, this study analyses his work within his political constituencies, and highlights how he attempted to balance their local concerns with his larger imperial agenda. Tomlinson guides readers through Britain's industrial challenges at the start of the twentieth century - with a particular focus on the textile economies of Churchill's constituencies in Lancashire and Scotland - and shows how industrial competition within the Empire exemplified the tensions between domestic economic policy and attempts at globalization, and influenced Churchill's later politics.

Tomlinson acknowledges the role of the First World War in boosting the industrial output and bargaining power of countries within the Empire, and analyses these alongside key moments in Churchill's early career, such as his defeat at Dundee, and time at the Exchequer. In doing so, the author highlights the context in which Churchill's ideas on the politics and economics of Empire were first formed, particularly in relation to the impact of imperial economic policy on British domestic prosperity. Ultimately, this book delivers a new assessment of twentieth-century British economic history, in the light of Britain's relationship to the Empire and the 'first great globalization'.

https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/churchill-and-industrial-britain-97813504…

by Max Farrar and Kevin McDonnell

This book addresses the ideas and experiences of a small British revolutionary socialist and feminist organisation in the 1970s and 1980s.

Written by two former members, it sets out the organisation’s eclectic influences: Italian Marxism, libertarianism, anarchism ― and its complex relationship with Leninism and Trotskyism. Big Flame lost momentum in the early 1980s when many leftists joined the Labour Party. It includes a critical interpretation of Big Flame’s successes and failures.

The analysis is interspersed with vignettes from 40 members reflecting on their days in the organisation. ‘Our book is aimed at those in the radical movements of every type who are seriously interested in political ideas and their relationship to political struggle. We are writing for an audience wider than those in the academy. This book seeks to assist those who continue to expose racist, patriarchal capitalism and to organise for a future where love and equality will prevail. The book explains Big Flame’s unconventional organisational structure and it includes descriptions of its interventions in a wide variety of struggles.”

https://www.merlinpress.co.uk/page/book-of-the-month

by Jörg Arnold

• offers a new interpretation of the place of the miners in late twentieth-century Britain
• Embeds the story of Britain's miners in an innovative methodological framework that shows how understandings of time were themselves historically contingent
• Uses the methodological framework to challenge teleological readings of late twentieth-century British history
• Reinserts the 1970s into the story of the coal industry, showing that the miners were admired and feared long before they came to be patronised and pitied
• Draws on the rich archival holdings of the National Union of Mineworkers' archive, much of it previously inaccessible, as well as a wealth of other primary source material

https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-british-miner-in-the-age-of…;