Conferences

Slavery: Unfinished Business
17-19 May 2007

A Proposal for a Conference at the Wilberforce Institute for the study of the Slavery and Emancipation (WISE), the University of Hull, co-sponsored by Kingston upon Hull City Council and Yorkshire Forward, 17-19 May 2007.

In 2007 Britain will commemorate the bicentenary of the legal abolition of its slave trade. Often considered a pioneering statement of human rights, Parliament's ending of slave trafficking was an historic step towards human freedom that helped to nurture other liberation movements and culminated in the formal outlawing of slavery worldwide by the end of the twentieth century. Sadly, however, slavery and the social injustices associated with it remain as real as they were two hundred years ago when William Wilberforce led the movement against the British slave trade. The emancipation movement still has unfinished business. This has prompted the University and City Council of Hull, the birthplace of Wilberforce, to join with the regional development agency, Yorkshire Forward, and other bodies, to create the Wilberforce Institute for the study of Slavery and Emancipation (WISE) as a venue for research and public debate on slavery and social justice, past and present. Bishop Desmond Tutu has graciously agreed to be Patron of WISE.

As a key part of its activities in British abolitionism's bicentenary year, WISE, with support from Hull City Council and Yorkshire Forward, will host on 17-19 May 2007 an international conference on the theme of Slavery: Unfinished Business. We plan to develop this overarching conference theme by promoting discussion around three sub-themes: the past in the present, movement and identity, and boundaries of freedom and coercion. One of our goals is to provoke new insights into the history of slavery, involuntary labour, and emancipation movements, broadly conceived. Another is to encourage research and debate on contemporary manifestations of slavery and the policies needed to eradicate them. We hope that our patron, an international icon of the struggle against contemporary slavery, will attend the conference. We also anticipate that a number of high profile keynote speakers will address the conference on issues relating to its core themes. A list of those who have agreed to be keynote speakers will be confirmed before final registration for the conference.

The conference convened through WISE will be a key event in Britain's commemoration of abolition in 2007. It will provide academics, educators, policy influencers and policy makers with a unique opportunity to come together for formal and informal discussion to learn from the past and to enhance understanding of what needs to be done to end slavery in the modern slavery. Accordingly, we invite offers of individual papers or suggestions for conference panels (of, say, 3-4 papers) on any aspect of global slavery and emancipation since 1500. Without wishing to discourage those whose approach falls within a specific discipline or is limited to a particular time period, we are especially keen to receive proposals for papers or sessions that offer multidisciplinary or interdisciplinary approaches to their subject and/or that embrace both historical and contemporary aspects of the conference themes. We propose to hold an as yet undetermined number of parallel sessions of papers each day of the conference to complement the keynote addresses given by our invited speakers.

Please send proposals for conference papers (including provisional title and 200 word summary) or for conference panels (including panel title, contributors, and 500-word summary of papers) by 31 May 2006 to Professor David Richardson, WISE, The University of Hull, Hull HU6 7RX, UK (email [email protected]). Decisions on proposals will be made no later than 31 October 2006.