The Academy of Finland research project at Åbo Akademi, Entangled Spaces - Global Connections and Local Articulations: Portals of Early Modern Globalization and Creolization During the Era of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade (EGL), will hold its first workshop in October 2012.

The aim of the workshop is to provide scholars and PhD students who study and analyze the interconnected histories of the Atlantic world during the era of the slave trade an opportunity to discuss their work. Inspired by the concept of “portals of globalization” (Middell and Naumann 2010), it can be argued that the effects and consequences of proto globalization and its local articulations in the Atlantic world can best be studied by focusing on various localities as portals of globalization?

Portals of globalization can be understood as localities that served as entrance points for cultural transfers and sites for the development of institutions and practices dealing with global connectedness. These portals of globalization were products of a new spatial order, the Atlantic world economy during the age of proto globalization, as well as physical sites of a range of both produced and overlapping spaces. On an abstract level, they signify overlapping or entangled spaces. The simultaneity and multiplicity of physical, virtual and imagined spaces can be studied by focusing on a particular location and, by extension, pursuing an asymmetrical comparison between different locations in the Atlantic world. Colonized space, entangled space and global space are the key concepts that serve as underlying guidelines and analytical categories for the workshop.

We call for submissions that deals with Atlantic spaces during the era of the slave trade by
- using of the concept of ‘portals of globalization’ and its application
- studying the simultaneity of the micro-, meso- and macro-level at a certain portal of globalization
- focusing on intra-, inter- and translocality
- reflecting on portals of globalization as entangled spaces.

We have invited two keynote speakers, professor Gunlög Fur (Linnaeus university, Växjö, Sweden) and professor Göran Rydén (Uppsala university, Sweden) to contribute with their expertise of entangled spaces in the eighteenth-century larger Atlantic world.
Submissions that do not directly deal with the aforementioned topics will also be considered.

The deadline for abstracts is 16 April 2012. Please submit an abstract of no more than 300 words together with a short CV for consideration to holger.weiss@abo.fi.
Authors will be notified on acceptance by 25 April 2012.