The organisers Stephan Conermann, Karoline Noack, Claudia Rauhut, Ulrike Schmieder, and Michael Zeuske invited a group of distinguished scholars and scholarly activists who will present papers about the traces of slavery in European towns and about tangible cultural heritage left by enslavers. They focus on public debates about the question of how to deal with the dissonant heritage of slavery. Participants will talk about different protagonists in the politics of memory referring to enslavement and its legacy in racism, a topic of particular relevance, as was recently shown by the Black Life Matters movement, which turned global in 2020, and by the toppling of monuments and statues.
Presentations point to the major nations of the trade of enslaved Africans, such as Portugal, Great Britain, France, Spain and the Netherlands, and countries whose involvement in Atlantic slavery is less well-known, such as Germany, Denmark and Sweden. The keynote will be given by Matthew J. Smith, director of the Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery.
Please register until 21 June 2021 via this link.
