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.
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Recent News
Call for Applications: Assistant Professor of Historical Studies and Digital Humanities (CEU Vienna)
Assistant Professor of Historical Studies and Digital Humanities (f/m/d) Department of Historical Studies, Central European University Starting date: 1 September 2024 Application deadline: 31 January 2024 Location: Vienna Full- Or Part-Time: Full-time The Department [...]
Deadline extended: WORCK Training School 2: Programming Labour History. Digital Methods for Social and Labour Historians
Bielefeld University, Germany 12–15 February 2024 Update: The deadline for applications has been extended to 20 October 2023. Since 2019, the COST Action “Worlds of Related Coercions in Work (WORCK)” (CA18205) has been bringing [...]
Call for Applications: Weatherhead Research Cluster on Global History Fellowship 2024–2025
The Weatherhead Research Cluster at Harvard University identifies and supports outstanding scholars whose work responds to the growing interest in the encompassing study of global history. We seek to organize a community of scholars interested [...]
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 [...]