Overview of Second Phase: 2026-2032
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© BCDSS
Additional 7 Years of Funding Secured
Read More
© BCDSS
Overview of Second Phase: 2026-2032
Additional 7 Years of Funding Secured

Welcome to the Cluster of Excellence at the  
Bonn Center for Dependency & Slavery Studies 

"Beyond Slavery and Freedom: 
Asymmetrical Dependencies in Pre-Modern Societies" 

We are a research cluster within the framework of the Excellence Strategy of the German federal and state governments. In May 2025, we were awarded a further seven years of funding by the German Research Foundation. Hence, as of January 2026, we will be starting our SECOND FUNDING PERIOD (2026-2032).

We investigate profound social dependencies such as slavery, serfdom, debt bondage, and other forms of permanent dependency across epochs, regions and cultures. 

Our focus lies "beyond slavery and freedom", i.e., we aim to overcome the binary opposition of "free" and "unfree". 

Instead, we propose the new key concept of "asymmetrical dependency" to explore all forms of bondages across time and space.       

BCDSS 2024: A Year in Highlights

Bild © Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies / YouTube

BCDSS 2024: A Year in Highlights

2024 was filled with milestones. Watch our highlights video to see what we accomplished together – thank you for being part of our journey!

Enmeshed & Entwined: FABRICS OF DEPENDENCY

Bild © Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies / YouTube

BCDSS exhibition launches digitally!

What can textiles – coarse cloth or fine silks, work and household linen, clothes in different styles and fashions – tell us about different forms of dependency: enslavement, serfdom, forced labour, or in our own day, factory work in the Global South?

Visit our digital exhibition ‘Enmeshed and Entwined: Fabrics of Dependency/Verstrickt und Verwoben: Texturen der Abhängigkeit’ and let our "quilted narratives" help you explore these and further questions.

News
© BCDSS
New Publication in DSS Series - Volume 21 Out Now!
We're delighted to share the publication of Studies on Slavery in Brazilian and African History and Literature, edited by University of Bonn Ambassador and Affiliated Researcher Roberto Hofmeister Pich and BCDSS Speaker Stephan Conermann.
Nov 27, 2025
© BCDSS
New Publication: Special Issue of Atlantic Studies
We are proud to announce a new publication by BCDSS Professor and Co-speaker, Pia Wiegmink. 
Nov 27, 2025
© BCDSS
Sciences and the Divine
Dies Academicus event led by the Rev. David Smith and Prof. Dr. Pia Wiegmink.Please note the event will be held in German.
Nov 25, 2025
© BCDSS
Call for Applications
The Ottoman Slavery Working Group invites submissions for the conference "Ottoman Slaveries and Typologies of Unfreedom."
Nov 21, 2025
© BCDSS
New Publication in DSS Series by Reinhard Zöllner
We are pleased to announce the publication of Slavery and Servile Societies in Korean History: The Hidden Background of Modern Korea (volume 26 in our Dependency and Slavery Studies Series with De Gruyter) by BCDSS Principal Investigator Prof. Dr. Reinhard Zöllner. 
Nov 19, 2025
© Institute for Social & Cultural Anthropology UHH / YouTube
Dies Academicus Lecture by Christian Mader and Philip Atta Mensah
As part of the Dies academicus at the University of Bonn, Christian Mader Researcher and Coordinator of the Research Group The Archaeology of Dependency (ArchDepth): Resources, Power and Status Differentiation and Philip Atta Mensah, master student at the Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies, will talk about whether slavery and colonialism have a tangible, material signature that can still be perceived today. Focusing on Fort William in Ghana, an important site in the British slave trade, the lecture will introduce the first results of a collaborative, interdisciplinary research project. By combining material culture studies, digital archaeology, historical research, community engagement, and sensory ethnography, the project reinterprets European forts on the West African coast as lasting architectures of exploitation that continue to influence postcolonial societies. Wednesday, 03.December 2025   02:15 PM - 03:00 PM Uni Main BuildingHörsaal IV
Nov 13, 2025
© BCDSS
Time is of the essence: temporal (in)justice, extractivisms, and dispossessions in the “green transition"
As part of Pollen conference 2026, the Panel P102 Time is of the essence: temporal (in)justice, extractivisms, and dispossessions in the ‘green transition,  invites researchers to explore how changing temporalities are central to extractive and renewable-energy projects. The panel will select 5-8 papers for oral presentation, with a view to a subsequent special journal issue. The call for contributions is open now; the deadline for submitting a paper proposal is 5 December 2025.  The conference will take place in Barcelona, Spain, from 29 June to 3 July 2026
Nov 11, 2025
© BCDSS
Volume 24 of the DSS Series is out now: New Publication by Zeynep Y. Gökçe and Jennifer Leetsch
Congratulations to BCDSS PhD Researcher Zeynep Y. Gökçe and Junior Professor and BCDSS Alumna Jennifer Leetsch, editors of the new publication Ecological Interdependencies: Strong Asymmetrical Relations and More-than-Human Worlds in our DSS Series with De Gruyter.
Nov 11, 2025
Events
© BCDSS
Monday Dec 08, 2025
Joseph C. Miller Memorial Lecture by Luis Rosenfield
Online via Zoom
04:15 PM
How did late-nineteenth-century Brazilian thinkers, working within a “Naturalistic Scientism” shaped by positivist and evolutionist theories, represent race ...
© BCDSS
Thursday Dec 11, 2025
Lecture and film by Behnaz Mirzai on African Slavery in Iran
Poststraße 26, 53111 Bonn
04:00 PM - 06:00 PM
How did the Iranian Constitutional Revolution and the Ottoman Tanzimat reforms reshape slavery across the Indian Ocean, Mediterranean, and Middle East? This ...
© BCDSS
Monday Dec 15, 2025
Joseph C. Miller Memorial Lecture by Marçal de Menezes Paredes
HYBRID event: On site ...
04:15 PM - 05:45 PM
What does 50 years of Angolan independence really mean? This lecture revisits Angola’s complex history beyond nationalist or Western narratives, exploring how ...
© BCDSS
Monday Jan 12, 2026
Joseph C. Miller Memorial Lecture by Evelyn Hu-DeHart
HYBRID event: On site ...
04:15 PM - 05:45 PM
What happens when 125,000 Chinese indentured men and enslaved African men and women work side by side on Cuban sugar plantations in the late nineteenth ...

Contact Us 

Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies (BCDSS)

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Managing Director: Sarah Dusend
Email: dependency@uni-bonn.de

Press and PR Manager: Cécile Jeblawei
Email: pr@dependency.uni-bonn.de

Address

University of Bonn
Niebuhrstraße 5
53113 Bonn  

BCDSS Fellowship Programs

Address

University of Bonn
Niebuhrstraße 5
53113 Bonn