‘Race’ and ‘labour’ describe two of the great mobilising forces which shaped Germany in the modern world. This conference seeks to explore their interaction in a wide range of contexts. The chosen timeframe is deliberately broad, stretching from the transformation of agrarian society in the early nineteenth century to questions concerning labour and race in the Third Reich and post-war Germany. Papers are welcome which deal with aspects such as:

- Gender, family and labour
- Labour, race and nationalism
- Representations of labour and race
- Migrant workers
- Labour and race in German colonialism
- Forced labour and ‘extermination through labour’
- Eugenics
- Compensation of foreign workers after 1945
- Ethnic Germans after 1945
- Racial ideology
- Critical race theory

We welcome submissions from historians and scholars from neighbouring disciplines and encourage a variety of methodological approaches. While it is our intention to cover the chosen timeframe in its entirety, papers probing less well-trodden paths of inquiry are particularly welcome.

The conference is open to academic staff and postgraduate students from any British or German university. The conference languages are English and German.

Proposals of 500 words for 20 minute papers, accompanied by a short CV, should be sent by 30 September to pearsinstitute@bbk.ac.uk.

Enquiries should be directed to Madisson Brown at pearsinstitute@bbk.ac.uk.

The conference is one of a series in the research exchange programme, ‘Germany and the World: Cultural Exchanges and Mutual Perceptions’ funded by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and organized by the University of Cambridge, Birkbeck, University of London, the Pears Institute for the study of Antisemitism, and The Wiener Library for the Study of the Holocaust and Genocide; in conjunction with the University of Freiburg, the University of Konstanz, the Free University of Berlin and the Zentrum für Antisemitismusforschung at the Technical University of Berlin.