Worlds of Related Coercions in Work
The COST Action “Worlds of Related Coercions in Work” (WORCK) calls for a radical change of perspective in labour history. It links the stories of work and production with those of violence, expropriation, and marginalisation. By studying the persistence and transformations of coercion and bondage across gender orders, geographic regions and historical eras, WORCK shifts the focus of labour history: from the male-breadwinner model and the free wage labourer or the capitalist mode of production to the understanding of the mechanisms of coercion in all work relations throughout history; from the analytical framework of the modern West to radical historicisation that helps reconceptualising labour history as a specific approach to social history and to link the study of the past with current debates on social inequalities and the flexibilisation and precarisation of work worldwide.
Learn more about WORCK here.
The funding period of WORCK has ended in March 2024.
Recent News
Call for Abstracts: “Punish and Rehabilitate through Work: Institutions, Discourses, and Agency in Central, Eastern, and Western Europe at the End of the 19th and in the First Half of the 20th Century” (Prague)
13-15 November 2024 Institute of History, Czech Academy of Sciences Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe, GWZO German Historical Institute Warsaw Faculty of Humanities, Charles University Deadline for Applications: 4 [...]
New Publication: “Coercion and Wage Labour: Exploring Work Relations through History and Art “
We are pleased to announce the publication of the edited volume "Coercion and Wage Labour: Exploring Work Relations through History and Art", edited by Anamarija Batista, Viola Müller and Corinna Peres. Coercion and Wage [...]
Call for Sessions and Papers on Labour and Working Class Studies: European Social Science History Conference (ESSHC)
Call for Sessions and Papers on Labour and Working Class Studies Fifteenth European Social Science History Conference (ESSHC) Leiden, the Netherlands 26–29 March 2025 Deadline: 15 April 2024 On 26–29 March 2025, the 15th [...]
Recent Blog Posts
In the Aftermath of Disaster: Death, Destruction, and the Emergence of a new Precariat (Virtual Mobility Grant)
This photo story collection was curated after the devastating earthquake that struck a significant area in Syria and Turkey on February 6, 2023. The project aimed to lend an ear to the narratives of [...]
Beyond Multilingualism: Constructing Common Language and Database Terms to Write Comparative and Entangled Histories. A Response.
By Justus Hillebrand (Independent Scholar/Digital History Consulting) I remember sitting in a session at the Rural History conference in 2017 in Leuven, Belgium. After presentations on fertilisers and state building from the eighteenth [...]
Solidarity with Iranian Women
By the Società Italiana delle Storiche (Italian Society of Women Historians) The Società Italiana delle Storiche (Italian Society of Women Historians) is following the recent events in Iran with admiration and concern in [...]