Ninth Global Conference on Slavery Past Present and Future Held in Amsterdam
07/02/2025
The Ninth Global Conference on Slavery Past, Present and Future, hosted by Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, took place in on the Vrije’s Amsterdam campus on June 26 and 27, 2025. The 32 participants and scholars hailed from Austria, Belgium, Germany, Ghana, India, Iran, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
The 9th conference built upon the work of earlier convenings, which were held in Oxford, Prague, Berlin, Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Leiden, Accra, and Vienna. This year’s conference included delegates from the disciplines of law, theology, anthropology, medical anthropology, literature and letters, history, and industrial design providing an opportunity to discuss slavery, enslavement, and slavery-like exploitations in all their forms across time and geographies.
IU McKinney’s Dean Karen E. Bravo, who founded this academic series in 2015, presented on the topic: “Jamaica’s Slaveocracy Through the Eyes of Thomas Thistlewood and Matthew Lewis.” In the photo above, Dean Bravo discusses her work.
“The opportunity to share deep knowledge and insights with scholars from around the world with such varied areas of expertise expanded the knowledge base and perspectives of all the participants and deepened engagement with this important topic,” Dean Bravo said.
Dean Bravo created the Slavery Past, Present, and Future initiative in 2015. The ninth conference built upon the work of earlier convenings, which were held in Mansfield College, Oxford University in Oxford, England, in 2015; Prague, the Czech Republic, in 2016; Indiana University Europe Gateway in Berlin, Germany, in 2018; University of Innsbruck in Innsbruck, Austria, in 2019; in a virtual format hosted by IU McKinney in 2021; followed by in-person convenings at Webster University Leiden Campus in The Netherlands in 2022; Webster University Accra Campus in Ghana in 2023, and the University of Vienna Department of African Studies in Vienna, Austria, in 2024.
In the photo, conference participants, including Dean Bravo in the foreground at left, took part in a canal boat tour focusing on Dutch colonial history and the country’s slavery footprint.
