On March 3 and 4 the first conference of the Global Labour History Network (GLHN) took place in Noida, near New Delhi, India. GLHN was established on June 16, 2015 when more than 40 representatives of labour history institutions from Asia, Africa, Europe, North America, Oceania and South America met in Barcelona at the initiative of the International Institute of Social History.
In Noida, approximately 25 scholars from Brazil, Canada, China, Japan, Senegal, the United States, a number of European countries, and of course India, during two days exchanged information of labour-history activities and projects in their separate regions, and discussed possibilities for future cooperation.
The conference was hosted by AILH-Association of Indian Labour Historians and took place in the premises of the VV Giri National Labour Institute in NOIDA, a development area outside of the capital city of Delhi.
The presentations consisted of a number of case studies of the situation of labour history research per country. Among the non-Europeans: Marcello Badaro Mattos of the Universidade Federal Fluminense (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), Prabhu Mohapatra of the Association of Indian Labour Historians (Delhi, India), Jun Kinoshita of the Ohara Institute for Social Research (Tokyo, Japan), Longhau Cui of the East China Normal University (Shanghai, China), Babacar Fall of the Cheikh Anta Diop University (Dakar, Senegal), Bryan Palmer of the Canadian Committee of Labour History (Canada) and Leon Fink of the University of Illinois (Chicago, USA).
The second day of the conference a number of international labour history research activities and networks were presented including Matthias van Rossum on IISH-International Institute of Social History, Andreas Eckert on re:work-IGK Work and Human Life Cycle in Global History, Susan Zimmerman on ITH-International Conference on Labour and Social History and Raquel Varela on IASSC-International Association for the Study of Strikes and Social Conflicts. This session also included a presentation of IALHI and the Social History Portal by Donald Weber of Amsab-ISH (Ghent, Belgium).
A Steering Committee was elected consisting of Babacar Fall (Senegal), Silke Neunsinger (Sweden), Kazue Enoki (Japan), Marcelo Badaró Mattos (Brazil), Longhau Cui (China), Joan Sangster (Canada) and Aruna Magier (India/USA). The Steering Committee will have two advisors: Marcel van der Linden and Andreas Eckert. Donald Weber was appointed webmaster of the GLHN's website, temporarily hosted by Amsab-ISH. There are plans of launching a GLHN Newsletter, a Global Labour History Blog and more so. The second GLHN Conference is planned for 2020 in Saint-Louis, Senegal.
GLHN defines itself as an interdisciplinary network of historians and other social scientists, and unites local, national and regional scholarly associations, journals, archives and museums, as well as committed individuals, who aspire to further the study of work and workers in the broadest sense. We are interested in paid and unpaid, free and unfree, productive and reproductive labour, in all areas of the globe and without temporal limitation. While our mandate includes modern rural and industrial workers such as miners, factory operatives, agricultural workers and dockers, it welcomes also those studying soldiers, domestic servants, sex workers, and caregivers. Unwaged labour, including slavery, indentured workers, debt peons, and homemakers are equally vital to our academic mandate.
GLHN promotes research, the collection of data, the sharing and mobilization of knowledge, and the preservation of archives and other historical materials. The network encourages the formation of collaborative transcontinental working groups on to pics such as, for example, free and unfree labour, gender, migration, colonial labour, trade unions, or other issues of wider relevance. The GLHN also envisages the organization of global conferences, as soon as resources make this possible.
Individuals may join, but are also encouraged to participate through existing organizations which will comprise the governing body of the network.