In recent decades, postcolonial studies have increasingly looked at the role of gender in colonial relations. Inspiring work by scholars such as Catherine Hall, Phillipa Levine, Anne McClintock, and Ann Stoler, has tremendously deepened our knowledge on how gender relations were constituted, and how in turn they shaped colonial relations around the world. While work and household labour relations have surfaced in these studies, they have not been the focus of attention.

This conference aims to change this, by focussing on the division of work between different members of households, and the ways in which gender and colonialism mutually constituted and changed these relationships. Our definition of colonialism is inclusive, in the sense that we are also interested in postcolonial or neocolonial influences on labour relations of households in the past. We want to bring together about 20-25 specialized scholars from different disciplines, such as history, sociology and anthropology provided that they take a long term historical perspective.

We wish to publish the proceedings of the conference in a peer reviewed journal or book series, depending on the quality of the contributions.

Please send an abstract (max. 500 words) before 1 May 2015 to: danielle.teeuwen@wur.nl.

If you have any further questions, do not hesitate to contact us.