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The Fifth Global Conference on Slavery Past, Present, and Future, part of a multi-year interdisciplinary project created and organized by IU McKinney Dean Karen E. Bravo, will take place in a virtual format July 7 through 9. The law school will serve as the virtual host.

Dean Bravo will present her paper titled “Looking Back to Look Forward.” Her work compares and contrasts contemporaneous events in the United States and Jamaica to unearth and explore the interlinkages and commonalities between the two countries. The piece also focuses upon their legacies of enslavement and the struggles of their enslaved and formerly enslaved people to derive lessons for the future.

The conference series brings together participants of different backgrounds and disciplines to discuss slavery, enslavement, and slavery-like exploitations in all its forms across time and geographies. By providing new opportunities for dialog across disciplinary and national boundaries, the conference series seeks to catalyze new insights and potential approaches, and the enrichment of knowledge on the topis of slavery. Delegates from across the globe take part in the event. Nations represented include Austria, Germany, India, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, South Africa, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The delegates’ disciplinary backgrounds included law, international relations, anthropology, history, philosophy, social work, and economic and political sciences.

The fifth conference will build upon the work of earlier events, which were held in Mansfield College, Oxford University in Oxford, England, in 2015; Prague, the Czech Republic, in 2016; at the Indiana University Europe Gateway in Berlin, Germany, in 2018; and the University of Innsbruck in Innsbruck, Austria, in 2019.