About

COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology) is a funding agency for research and innovation networks. Our Actions help connect research initiatives across Europe and enable scientists to grow their ideas by sharing them with their peers. This boosts their research, career and innovation.
Rather than funding research itself, resource creation or IT systems development, COST Actions provide the networking support needed to ensure that nationally funded initiatives add up to something greater than the sum of their individual parts.

The COST Action CA18205 “Worlds of Related Coercions in Work” (WORCK) is therefore essentially a networking programme. Grown out of the working group “Free and Unfree Labour” of the European Labour History Network, it brings together labour and social historians, linguists and anthropologists, lawyers and sociologists from all over Europe.

From 1 November 2019 to 31 October 2023, this COST Action organizes annual WORCK Meetings, WORCK Conferences and Training Schools, and finances Short Term Scientific Missions and ITC Conference Grants for early PhD students and early career investigators from Inclusiveness Target Countries (i.e. Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Croatia, Hungary, Lithuania, Latvia, Luxembourg, Malta, Moldava, Montenegro, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Slovakia, Republic of North Macedonia, Republic of Serbia and Turkey).

WORCK applies the COST Inclusiveness Policy to bring out excellence in science Europe-wide and to clear away obstacles by offering low-barrier entry research networks and creating interdisciplinary research cooperation opportunities for researchers. Mainly based on geographical spread, career stage and gender balance, it seeks to reach balance between Inclusiveness Target Countries (ITC) and non-ITC Member Countries, between senior and early career researchers and between men and women for leading positions, selection committees and coordinating tasks. WORCK prioritises early career investigators and researchers without institutional support for reimbursement, and favours ITC locations as local hosts for WORCK activities.