Beyond the Atlantic Paradigm: Slavery in Comparative Perspective
18.11.2025 H17:00-18:30
19.11.2025 H09:30-18:00
18.11.2025 H17:00-18:30
19.11.2025 H09:30-18:00
This event is conceived by the SNSF Starting Grant TraIL: Tracing Labour in Islamicate Legal Traditions (Prof. Dr. Serena Tolino) and the SNSF-funded project TraSIS: Trajectories of Slavery in Islamicate Societies: Three Concepts from Islamic Legal Sources (Prof. Dr. Serena Tolino) in collaboration with the Institute Middle East and Muslim Societies at University of Bern and the Department Italian Institute of Oriental Studies – ISO, Sapienza University of Rome.
This two-day conference brings together scholars to investigate the themes of labour, strong asymmetrical dependencies, coercion, and slavery in Islamicate and African societies from a longue durée and comparative perspective.
By placing Islamic legal, social, and intellectual histories in dialogue with global approaches, the conference seeks to move beyond the Atlanticparadigm that has long dominated slavery studies. It brings together scholars working on diverse temporal and regional contexts – from early kalām to colonial North Africa, from Ottoman and post-Ottoman courts to modern Mauritania – to examine how practices of enslavement, asymmetrical dependencies, and coerced labour shaped social hierarchies, gendered relations, and notions of belonging. The discussions aim to illuminate how the study of labour and coercion can enrich research on slavery and enslaved persons, while also revealing the conceptual and methodological continuities between these fields.
The programme begins with a roundtable, Beyond the Atlantic Paradigm: Slavery in Comparative Perspective, which introduces two major new works – Slavery and the Slave Trade in Ethiopian Studies (Harrassowitz, 2025) and Slavery and the Shaping of the Premodern Muslim Family (De Gruyter, forthcoming) – as entry-points for rethinking the field. The second day features a range of case studies and thematic papers, alongside presentations on the TraSIS and TraIL projects themselves.
Taken together, the conference offers a state-of-the-art reflection on current research and opens new comparative and collaborative pathways for studying labour, slavery and coercion across the Islamicate and African worlds.
PROGRAMME:
18.11.2025
H17:00-17:10 Intitutional Greetings, Ilyas Azouzi (Head of Science, Research, and Innovation at Istituto Svizzero)
H17:10-18:40 Opening Roundtable
Beyond the Atlantic Paradigm: Slavery in Comparative Perspective
Chair: Omar Anchassi (University of Bern)
Speakers:
Yonas Ashine Demisse (Addis Ababa University) – Online
Giulia Bonacci (Institute of Research for Development, Marseille, and the University of Mauritius) – Online
Cristina de la Puente (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Madrid
Ahmed Hassen Omer (Addis Ababa University) – Online
Alexander Meckelburg (University College London and University of Bern)
Serena Tolino (University of Bern and Sapienza University of Rome)
Discussants:
Francisco Apellániz (University of Naples “L’Orientale”)
Nicola Camilleri (Maynooth University and Roma Tre University)
19.11.2025
H09:30-11:30 Panel I: Slavery in Text and Thought
Chair: Serena Tolino (University of Bern)
Omar Anchassi (University of Bern)
The Sins of the Father: Theodicy, Salvation and Enslavement in Early Kalām
Zahra Azhar (Leiden University)
The Status of Umm al-Walad: A Hadith-Based Study in Shiʿi Tradition
Valentina Sagaria Rossi (University of Rome Tor Vergata)
Slave, Servant and Slavery in Classical Arabic Proverbs
H11:30-12:00 Coffee Break
H12:00-13:00 Panel II: Law, Gender, and the Household
Chair: Francesco Zappa (Sapienza University of Rome)
Cristina de la Puente (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Madrid)
Men’s Work, Women’s Work According to Andalusi Notarial Manuals
Laura Emunds (University of Bern)
Negotiating Legal Liminality: Sunnī Perspectives on the Kitābah’s Effect on the Owner–Mukātabah Relationship
H13:00-14:30 Break
H14:30-16:00 Panel III: Labour, Law and the Courts
Chair: Cristina de la Puente (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Madrid)
Nicola Melis (University of Cagliari)
Law, Labour, and the Slave Trade in the Late Ottoman Red Sea: Evidence from Hodeidah
Jasmine Benhaida (University of Basel)
Law and Labour: Post-Ottoman Sharia Court Records from al-Salt (Jordan)
Ari Schriber (University of Erfurt)
The Law of Enslaved Motherhood: Proving Sexual Entitlement in Early-20th-Century Morocco
H16:00-16:30 Coffee Break
H16:30-17:30 Panel IV: Abolition, Coercion, and the Modern State
Chair: Michael Frey (University of Bern)
Fulvio Bertuccelli (Sapienza University of Rome and University of Bern)
The National Defense Law, Forced Labour, and the Discourse of Treason: Wartime
Mobilization in Turkey during the Second World War
Deborah Scolart (University of Naples “L’Orientale”),
How to Abolish Slavery by Law but Not in Practice: Evidence from Mauritania in a Comparative Perspective
H17:30-18:00 Final Discussion
SAVE THE DATE
Sign up to this event to receive a notification email