by Dr. Sasha Goldstein-Sabbah (University of Groningen)

From April 6-8 2025, the historic halls of the University of Warsaw became the vibrant meeting ground for sixteen scholars from across Europe converging to rethink and reframe Jewish histories through a Mediterranean lens. The workshop, titled Jewish Dis/Connections across and beyond the Modern Mediterranean, offered more than a gathering of minds—it was an invitation to rethink boundaries, identities, and narratives that have long defined Jewish studies in Europe.

Why the Mediterranean, Why Now?

Traditionally, European Jewish history has centered on communities in Central, Western, and Eastern Europe. Southern Europe and the Mediterranean have often been either marginalized or treated as outliers in scholarly discourse. This workshop sought to flip that script.

Guided by the organizing team—Dr. Magdalena Kozłowska (University of Warsaw), Dr. Noëmie Duhaut (University of Southampton), and Dr. Sasha Goldstein-Sabbah (University of Groningen)—the event proposed an integrative approach to Jewish history. It focused on mobility, not just of people, but of ideas, objects, languages, and institutions. As modern historians turn increasingly toward transnational and transimperial perspectives, this gathering highlighted how Jewish lives in and around the Mediterranean challenge established categories and regional divides.

A Crossroads of Scholarship

Over three days, participants dove into a panoply of themes: from nationalism and empire to gender, race, and commemoration. The unifying thread? The complex, often contradictory nature of Jewish mobility and identity in Mediterranean contexts.

In a thought provoking keynote, Prof. Matthias B. Lehmann (University of Cologne) explored what a Mediterranean framework might bring to modern Jewish history. Building on S.D. Goitein’s famed application of this approach to the medieval Geniza world, Lehmann encouraged scholars to view the Mediterranean not simply as a connector but also as a site of rupture and redefinition.

Matthias B. Lehmann giving the Keynote address in Warsaw April 2025, photograph by Noëmie Duhaut all rights reserved (2025)

What emerged was a rich portrait of the Mediterranean as a space where Jewish identity has been shaped and reshaped—through colonial entanglements, economic migrations, cultural affiliations, and diasporic memory.

From Algeria to the Negev: Snapshots of a Disconnected Yet Intertwined World

The range of presentations spoke to the diverse and dynamic range of research being conducted in Europe.

Eliaou Balouka’s work on Jewish-Muslim symbioses in Algeria unearthed little-known stories of shared mourning rituals and theological overlap—histories often eclipsed by modern polarizations. Dr. Roy Shukrun flipped the lens to post-independence Israel, where Moroccan Jewish migrants negotiated their North African pasts within the state-building landscape of the Negev.

Panellists presenting in Warsaw April 2025, photograph by Noëmie Duhaut all rights reserved (2025)

Other presenters followed the threads of mobility through less obvious routes. Lida Dodou reimagined the Jewish migration from Salonika, traditionally viewed through its maritime port, by tracing rail connections to Hapsburg Europe. Dr. Dario Miccoli followed the Jews of Rhodes across the globe, showing how these movements were driven by both opportunity and trauma—from Fascist persecution to the Holocaust and decolonization.

Meanwhile, Dr. Noëmie Duhaut and Dr. Paris Papamichos-Chronakis spotlighted Jewish involvement in diplomacy and humanitarianism. Their work revealed Jews as not just passive recipients of aid or displaced peoples, but also as active players in shaping transnational relief efforts and legal networks.

These papers were not isolated inquiries—they spoke to each other, building a conversation that crisscrossed disciplines and geographies. From Calcutta to Beirut, from Libya to British India, participants traced how Jewish lives were constantly entangled in the shifting tides of empire, modernity, and memory.

Bridging Generations and Institutions

One of the workshop’s most central objectives was its commitment to inclusivity. PhD candidates and early career scholars shared the floor with established academics, generating a dynamic and collaborative atmosphere. For many, it was a rare chance to present in-progress work to a responsive, interdisciplinary audience.

By bringing this conversation into the heart of Europe, the organizers also made a statement: the study of Mediterranean Jewish history belongs within European academic institutions, not at their periphery. Warsaw—symbolically and geographically far from the Mediterranean—became an unlikely but fitting host, underscoring the workshop’s central message about interconnectedness and scholarly realignment.

Looking Ahead

The workshop was not just a one-off event. Plans are already in motion for a special issue in a peer-reviewed journal featuring selected papers, and future conference panels are in the works. Collaborations have been sparked with networks like “The Modern Mediterranean” and “EUME,” and a follow-up workshop is being discussed with Prof. Lehmann.

The workshop included two cultural excursions, to allow workshop attendees to appreciate the depth of Jewish history present in Warsaw. Participants toured the POLIN Museum and the Okopowa Street Jewish Cemetery, one thing was clear: this wasn’t just about history—it was about rewriting its map.

Display in the POLIN Museum, photograph by Noëmie Duhaut all rights reserved (2025)

Grave monument in the Okopowa Street Jewish Cemetery, photograph by Noëmie Duhaut all rights reserved (2025)

A New Chapter in Jewish Studies

Jewish Dis/Connections across and beyond the Modern Mediterranean signaled a growing momentum within the field to challenge Eurocentric narratives and embrace more pluralistic, mobile histories. It invited scholars to consider the Mediterranean not just as a space of nostalgia or origin, but as a living framework—one that reframes Jewish experience through routes taken, borders crossed, and identities forged in motion.

As conversations sparked in Warsaw continue to ripple outward, this workshop has laid the groundwork for a reinvigorated, transregional approach to Jewish history—one that is as complex, dynamic, and interconnected as the Mediterranean world itself.

received from the event organisers

We are pleased to announce that the Work, Authenticity, and Social Identity in Early Modern Britain (c.1500-1750) Conference, supported by the Warwick Early Modern and Eighteenth Century Centre, the Doctoral Training Partnership AHRC-Midlands4Cities, the Society for the Study of Labour History, the Social History Society, and the Past & Present Society, will take place in the Scarman Conference Centre at the University of Warwick on 10-11 June 2025.

Keynote addresses will be delivered by Professor Steve Hindle (Washington University in St Louis), Professor Jane Whittle (University of Exeter), and jointly by Dr Mark Hailwood (University of Bristol) & Dr Brodie Waddell (Birkbeck, University of London).

Over the past several decades, scholars of British social and cultural history have fundamentally reshaped our understanding of early modern labour, social identity, and the self, demonstrating the analytical power of incorporating interdisciplinary approaches into their analyses alongside a diverse range of sources, from ballads to legal records. This conference seeks to develop this important body of work, inviting fresh perspectives on themes that have proven foundational to the study of early modern British social and cultural history. Non-elite early modern people spent a large portion of their lives ‘at work’, and their labouring experiences were often a central component of their identities and mental universes. We are interested in further unpacking these intersections between labour and identity, as well as the sociopolitical significance of how such relationships were communicated to individuals and communities—what we have capaciously termed ‘authenticity’ here, in hopes of prompting a variety of interpretations and responses.

Registration is essential! If you are interested in attending as a non-speaker, please contact Anna Pravdica at EarlyModern2025@gmail.com

Organised by Anna Pravdica (University of Warwick), Angus Crawford (University of Warwick), and Daniel Muddimer (University of Birmingham)

Programme

Day One, 10 June

8.00-9.25 Registration & Coffee

9.25-9.30 Welcome & Introduction

9.30-11.10 Panel 1 – Craftsmen, Trade, & Regulation

Bernard Capp (University of Warwick), Craft Identities: Collective Assertion and Personal Rejection

Owen Adams (University of Bristol), Defending the Myne: Maintaining Mining Autonomy and Livelihoods in the Forest of Dean from 1612

Anna Pravdica (University of Warwick), Representations of Labour: Economic Deceit and Social Subversion in Seventeenth-Century England

Ed Legon (Queen Mary, University of London), True or False: Authenticity and the Politics of Regulation in the Seventeenth-Century Textile Industry

11.10-12.30 Keynote Address

Steve Hindle (Washington University in St. Louis), The Tools and the Job: The Material Culture of Labour in Early Modern England

12.30-13.30 Lunch

13.30-15.10 Panel 2 – Religion & Nonconformity

Amy Stanning (Lancaster University), Catholic Participation in Civil Administration: The Surprising Case of the Land Tax in Lancashire

Daniel Muddimer (University of Birmingham), Catholic Royalist Activism and Authenticity

Evie Nash (University of Warwick), Shaping the Vagrant: Definitions of Vagrancy in Early Quaker ‘Sufferings’

Peter Lake (Vanderbilt University), Puritanism and Work

15.10-15.30 Coffee Break

15.30-17.10 Panel 3 – Music, Literature, & Performance

Noah Millstone (University of Birmingham), Reading as Labour in Early Modern Europe

Valentino Placanica (University of Bologna), ‘Because Musicians Have No Gold for Sounding’: Musicians, Migration, and Social Identity in Early Modern England, Between Craft and Performance

Yuqi Jiang (University of Birmingham), (Dis)crediting Old Wives’ Tales: Biblical and Classical Allusions in George Peele’s Play The Old Wives’ Tale (1595)

Angela McShane (University of Warwick), Women at Work in the Ballad Trade in Seventeenth-Century England

17.10-17.30 Coffee Break

17.30-18.50 Panel 4 – Gender, Domesticity, & Neighbourhood

Naomi Pullin (University of Warwick), Solitary Work and the Labour of Solitude

Abigail Carr (University of Leicester), Wet Nursing, Marital Status, and Familial Relationships in the Early Eighteenth Century

Alasdair McNeill (Birkbeck, University of London), Cheesemaking, Community, and Identity in Eighteenth-Century England

19.00-21.00 Conference Dinner

Day Two, 11 June

8.00-9.25 Breakfast & Coffee

9.25-9.30 Welcome & Introduction

9.30-10.50 Panel 5 – Poverty, Poor Relief, & Belonging

Ian Archer (University of Oxford), Pauper Apprenticeship in Early Modern London

Grace Marshall (Birkbeck, University of London), Disability and Physical Difference in Early Modern England

Naomi Tadmor (Lancaster University), Settlement and Identity, c.1662-1697

10.50-12.10 Keynote Address

Jane Whittle (University of Exeter), Housework as the Performance of Status in Early Modern England

12.10-13.10 Lunch

13.10-14.30 Panel 6 – Masculinity & Martial Identities

Joshua Racey (University College London), Social and Economic Effects of Garrisoning in the Reign of James II

Dylan Neill Andres (University of Bristol), Gender, Class, and Labour in the Popular Construction of the Martial Self

Melissa Glass (University of Calgary), Major George Strangeways versus John Fussell, Attorney at Law: The Emotional and Legal Labour of Conflicting Masculinities in Interregnum England

14.30-15.50 Panel 7 – Maritime Identities

Zara Money (University of Exeter), Billingsgate Fish Market: A Unique Centre of Maritime Cultural Identity

Amber Hogan (University of Bristol), Manuscript Mise-en-page and the Representation of Maritime Authority

Ryan Mewett (United States Naval Academy), Cut-rate Gentility: The Social Anxieties of Early Georgian Royal Navy Officers

15.50-16.20 Coffee Break

16.20-17.40 Panel 8 – Occupations & Labouring Identities

Nick Collins (University of Exeter), ‘The lab’ring Neat, (as you) may have their fill of meat’: The Construction of an Identity for Working Oxen in Early Modern England

Rebecca Giffard (University of Exeter), Tenant, Labourer, and Customer: The Multiple Identities Played by a Single Employee

Tim Reinke-Williams (University of Northampton), Public Houses and the Gendered Division of Labour in Seventeenth-Century England

17.40-19.00 Joint Keynote Address

Mark Hailwood (University of Bristol) & Brodie Waddell (Birkbeck, University of London), Work and Identity in Early Modern England: A Response to Hailwood and Waddell

Final Remarks & Goodbyes!

received from Dr. Michelle Pfeffer (Magdalen College, University of Oxford)

Dates: 11-12 July 2025

Location: Seminar Room, Radcliffe Humanities Building, Radcliffe Observatory Quarter, Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2 6GG

Programme

Registration

Overview – Conference Theme and Goals

Historians have studied extensively how sciences begin—but how do they end? This is a crucial question for understanding how the labour of knowledge-making evolves. Previous attention to the founding, disciplining, and professionalisation of individual sciences has provided robust frameworks for thinking through the birth and growth of knowledge-making communities. Far less attention has been directed toward how those same communities decay, dissipate, or evolve beyond the contemporary boundaries of science. This conference seeks to cultivate case studies of the ends of sciences, and thereby to motivate a new approach to thinking about the developmental trajectories of scientific disciplines, communities, institutions, and the ordering of expert knowledge. A further aim is to strengthen the community of scholars with a shared interest in studying the ends of sciences.

A small lunch will be provided on both days of the conference. If you have any dietary requirements, please email Michelle at michelle.pfeffer@history.ox.ac.uk.

We hope to arrange a conference dinner for Friday 11 July following the keynote lecture. Once arrangements are finalised we will be in contact with all registered participants to ask if you’d like to attend.

Past & Present is pleased to support this event and supports other events like it. Applications for event funding are welcomed from scholars working in the field of historical studies at all stages in their careers.

by Dr. Robert Yee (Wadham College, University of Oxford)

The University of Oxford convened a two-day conference on the history of political economy, capitalism, and global governance between 7 and 8 April 2025. Co-organised by Patricia Clavin, Aled Davies, and Robert Yee, the conference brought together 15 speakers for a discussion on the future of the field.

Radcliffe Camera, Oxford, photograph by Robert Yee (2025), all rights reserved

In recent years, scholars have assessed the history of global economic governance from multiple perspectives. They have focused on the rise of development initiatives, the impact of wars on the global order, and the tensions between national interests and international cooperation. Together, these works have broadened our understanding of the evolving role of individuals, ideas, and institutions in shaping the world economy.

Our conference reflected on these topics and suggested new directions for the field. We were particularly interested in examining the ways in which the idea of the world economy has been contested, debated, governed and restructured during moments of crisis and change. We also explored the time and temporality of crises, considering the various speeds at which different types of crises, from financial to environmental, proliferated.

The conference consisted of five panels, each with three presentations. Our first panel focused on the role of international organisations in promoting economic development. The presenters showed how ideas of equality, stability, and cooperation motivated different visions of global development from the 1960s to the 1990s.

The second session involved a discussion on economic interdependence during the Cold War. We explored how governments in various parts of the world, from Iceland and Chile to Hungary and Iraq, conceived of their changing role in the global economy.

We began the afternoon sessions with a panel on technocracy. The presentations showed how experts developed statistical methods and legal tools to shape debates over economic policy from the interwar years to the 1970s. How their interventions reshaped different policies, including labor regulation, economic cooperation, and welfare regimes, was a key point of discussion.

The last session of the day critically examined the idea of the so-called American century. We debated how the United States aimed to address challenges to its authority during the twentieth century. The ensuing discussion explored how state officials and private actors often worked within existing institutions to shape imperial, financial, and agriculture governance.

St John’s College Oxford quadrangle, photograph by Robert Yee (2025), all rights reserved

The following day, we examined the evolution of trade and industry from a global perspective. Our discussion assessed competing ideas of free trade and economic liberalism since the Second World War. We observed long-term global deindustrialisation trends from the 1960s to the present.

The conference concluded with a roundtable led by Patricia Clavin and Martin Daunton. We initially probed the interactions between different scales of economic governance, including the global, imperial, regional, and national framework. Future studies of economic governance should also consider less commonly studied scales, such as the Eastern bloc, the Southern cone, and OPEC.

Another common theme was the structure of economic institutions themselves. We noted the many instances in which prominent international organisations have struggled to maintain influence due to intra-national and intra-regional disputes. Whether such institutions should aim to be large and inclusive or small and effective, and how they seek to govern by either votes or consensus, remained a key topic of interest.

Our conversation then shifted to discussion of continuities and ruptures in the prewar and postwar years. We considered the novelty of post-1945 developments, and whether such changes actively drew on precedents from the nineteenth century or interwar period. How governments and institutions adapted to changing economic conditions, such as the oil crisis, also motivated this discussion.

Finally, we discussed the future of the field and, in particular, our audience outside academia. The session was concerned with the extent to which historians should engage with themes that resonate with current events, what it means to be presentist, and how we should write histories tailored to an increasingly global community of scholars and policymakers.

This conference was sponsored by Past & Present, the History & Political Economy Project, the Economic History Society, the Conference for European Studies at Temple University, the Rothermere American Institute, the Oxford Martin School Changing Global Orders project, St John’s College, and Wadham College.

Past & Present was pleased to support this event and supports other events like it. Applications for event funding are welcomed from scholars working in the field of historical studies at all stages in their careers.

received from Mariana Bodnaruk (Masaryk University, Brno), Stephan Bruhn (German Historical Institute, London) and Michael Eber (University of Oxford)

Dates: 22 – 23 May 2025

Venue: German Historical Institute, London/online via the Zoom platform

Overview

Trans saints – monachoparthenoi, saints who are initially described as female by their hagiographers, but transition to a male (often monastic) identity – are present in every late antique and medieval Christian tradition. The textual and artistic renderings of these figures offer a comparative key to conceptualizing trans bodies and trans souls across geographical and chronological boundaries. Binary cis-heteronormativity has long been portrayed as unchanging and unchangeable, as outside of the scope of history. This is a central plank in the playbook followed by transphobes worldwide, in the ever-escalating “culture war” against trans and queer people. Highlighting both the ubiquity and multivalence of premodern trans monks, and connecting across disciplinary divides to do so, is urgent work, not least because it provides a necessary counterpoint to such historically inaccurate rhetoric.

Following the insights of the “performative turn” in queer and trans studies that underscores the enactment and negotiation of gender identity through lived experiences, social practices, and narratives, we welcome explorations of gender and sexuality in the textual traditions in both East and West and in their translation. We also take into consideration aspects related to the ”performative turn” in visual studies in the last decade, as relevant for both medieval Eastern and Western hagiographic iconographies of trans saints, focusing on visual representations actively shaping identities and power dynamics and incorporating the embodied experience of the ritual practices.

While texts regarding fifteen trans saints are attested in the Eastern Mediterranean, this conference will focus on those whose vitae were available in Greek as well as in Latin: Eugenia*us, Euphrosyne*Smaragdus, Marina*us, Pelagia*us and Theodora*us. However, we particularly invite papers covering linguistic and artistic traditions beyond Greek and Latin, from Coptic to Old Norse. Taking seriously the connectivity of the Latin West, the Orthodox East, and the Islamic World in the Middle Ages, we adopt a trans-cultural comparative approach. Thus, contributions with a multilingual perspective are particularly welcome, as are those covering both textual and iconographic representations. Conference proceedings may be published as an edited volume.

Registration and programme

This conference will take place at the German Historical Institute, London (speakers only). It is open to external visitors online via Zoom. In order to attend this event online, please register (free) via Eventbrite to take part on Day 1 and/or Day 2.

Conference Programme

Past & Present is pleased to support this event and supports other events like it. Applications for event funding are welcomed from scholars working in the field of historical studies at all stages in their careers.

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