Resources and Their Histories: Commodification, Resistance, and the Making of Material Worlds
Conference: Friday, 3 September 2027
Pre-conference “Meet the Authors” event: Thursday, 2 September 2027
University of Bern, Switzerland
Deadline for applications: 15 January 2027
Organizers: Tina Asmussen (Ruhr University Bochum / Deutsches Bergbau-Museum Bochum); Juri Auderset (University of Bern); Sandra Bott (University of Lausanne); Moritz von Brescius (University of Basel)
Sponsor: Schweizerische Gesellschaft für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte (SGWSG) / Société suisse d’histoire économique et sociale (SSHES)
What counts as a resource, for whom, and under what historical conditions? This international conference invites scholars to examine how landscapes, materials, bodies, knowledge, and energies have been transformed into – or have resisted becoming – resources across time and space. Moving beyond conventional commodity histories, we seek to historicize the category of “resource” itself and to explore the contested processes through which diverse entities became legible, usable, valuable, governable, sacred, protected, or unavailable.
We are especially interested in material and natural resources broadly conceived: soils, forests, waters, minerals, plants, animals, bodies, infrastructures, energies, and forms of knowledge that enabled or contested access to material worlds. We welcome papers from all historical periods and regions that examine how landscapes, bodies, materials, and knowledges have been constituted, contested, or foreclosed as resources. These processes include, but are not limited to, commodification and its refusals. How have religious, spiritual, legal, ecological, imperial, socialist, Indigenous, and technical understandings shaped resource-making? How have particular materials or environments resisted extraction, circulation, standardization, or commodification?
The conference particularly encourages submissions that address the genealogy of resource-thinking; the role of infrastructures, expertise, and transformation processes; embodied, sacred, and situated knowledges; environmental limits and non-human agency; and the contradictory, uneven nature of resource-making across biotic, mineral, energy, and knowledge systems. We are especially keen to include perspectives from Eastern Europe, the Soviet and post-Soviet worlds, Latin America, the Andes, Asia, Africa, and other contexts that can challenge or complicate analytical frameworks developed primarily from Western European or North Atlantic experience.
Confirmed keynote speakers include Prof. Dr. Katja Bruisch (Trinity College Dublin) and Prof. Dr. Debjani Bhattacharyya (University of Zurich).
We welcome applications consisting of a paper title, an abstract of up to 300 words, and a short academic CV or biographical note of up to 250 words.
Submissions may be made in English, German, or French. Please send applications to: materialworlds2027@gmail.com
Limited funding is available for doctoral and early-career researchers. Since we are planning to publish a selection of papers in an edited volume, unpublished material is especially welcome.
The conference will take place at the University of Bern, which is easily reached by train and, for overseas participants, via Zurich, Basel, or Geneva airports, all of which offer direct train connections to Bern. Presentations will be in person only; no hybrid format will be offered. Papers should be 20 minutes in length.
On Thursday, 2 September 2027, there will be a “Meet the Authors” event, where our keynote speakers will share their experiences of writing major works of history. The event will also give students and early-career researchers the opportunity to meet leading voices in the field in a more informal setting.