Leiden Slavery Studies Association

Global Abolitionisms Network

The Global Abolitionisms Network, established in 2015, is an international network of scholars working on antislavery activism and abolitionism. It is affiliated to the Leiden Slavery Studies Association.

The network and the activities it develops are meant as the first steps towards consolidating the study of abolitionisms under a new framework, paradigm, or research program that we call “Global Abolitionisms.” Simply put, our idea is that this framework will advance the scholarly debate by doing justice both to difference between varieties of abolitionist ideas and practices and their complex interconnectedness.

There is a critical mass of new research on abolitionism. “Classical” Anglo-American abolitionism has been re-envisioned in recent work and abolitionisms in other locales and time periods have been brought more clearly to the analytical spotlight. We see our first task as systematizing and organizing this accumulated critical mass of new work and believe that a “Global Abolitionisms” perspective will work well as an overarching framework to consolidate thus a new state of the art. In more pragmatic terms, we also think of this network as the means to facilitate and intensify communication between the growing number of students of various abolitionisms, creating thus the condition for new creativity, discoveries, and collaborations. 

Membership of the network is free and open to anyone. We invite all scholars with an interest in abolitionism to join our network by signing up here. Institutional affiliations are welcomed as well. 

The Global Abolitionisms Network, an initiative of the Leiden Slavery Studies Association, is coordinated by

• Maartje Janse, Leiden University, Institute for History.
• Peter Stamatov, Institute of Sociology, NYU Abu Dhabi / Universidad Carlos III de Madrid.
• Angela Alonso, Department of Sociology, University of São Paulo.
• Richard Huzzey, History Department University of Liverpool.

The goals of the network are to facilitate interaction and to stimulate discussions, to organize panels, seminars, conferences, publications and joint grant proposals. 

If you want to become a member, please send an e-mail to Dr. Maartje Janse.