One year after the initiation of our COST Action, the WORCK Meeting 2 took place on 24 February. At this event, more than 80 scholars from all over Europe, as well as international partners from Brasil and South Africa met virtually in order to discuss thematic aspects and methodological questions of a global history of labour and coercion. Each working group presented their current state of discussion and gave insight into ongoing publication projects as well as planned meetings. Moreover, the WORCK Publication Platform was presented. The platform will function as a digital archive, documenting historical sources on coerced labour as well as Data Stories and Working Papers presenting the current research of WORCK members. With this initiative, we hope to set the basis for an empirically grounded comparison of forms and levels of coercion across time and space. WORCK members interested in contributing a dataset for the digital archive and publishing on the platform are encouraged to contact worck@worck.eu.
Finally, the meeting also gave the opportunity for discussing the possibilities and challenges of international scientific cooperation in times of a pandemic at a roundtable with representatives from other COST Actions as well as the COST Science Officer Mickael Pero.
The next WORCK Conference is planned to take place in Vienna from 30 August to 3 September.