Workers and Worldmaking: Labour in the Era of Decolonization
From 25 to 27 September 2025, the FWF project (P34980), ‘A Socialist Workplace in Postcolonial Africa: A Connected History of the Yugoslav Workforce in Zambia’, together with the International Conference of Labour and Social History (ITH), has organised our final conference in Linz. We would like to express our gratitude to the Chamber of Labour of Upper Austria, the Chamber of Labour of Vienna, the Institute for Historical Social Research, the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, the Austrian Society for Political Education and the City of Linz for their additional support.
The conference brought together around fifty scholars to discuss issues related to labour and decolonisation in various settings. The conference’s keynote speakers were Samita Sen (University of Cambridge), who emphasised the struggles of women and informal workers in India, and Frederick Cooper (New York University), who spoke about ‘Solidarities and Differences: Decolonisation, Labour, and the Limits of Nationalist Politics’. Contributions ranged from the anti-imperial struggles of the Irish labour movement in the early 20th century, to debates over wages for domestic work and the anti-colonial struggles of various African and Asian trade unions. There were also explorations of workers’ and union archives, and anti-colonial and anti-imperial labour solidarity based on religious affinities.
Together with our colleagues from the ITH, we also organised a special public event where Prof. Lucile Dreidemy (University of Austria) and Emma Wyschata (Solidar Austria) discussed the views of the Austrian labour movement on decolonisation and Third World struggles, past and present.
You can find the programme here.
We would like to thank our colleagues from the ITH for providing exciting intellectual stimulation, as well as excellent conference infrastructure and technical and organisational support. We encourage you to support the ITH’s work by becoming a full member.
