Epistemic Inequalities and their Consequences: The International Labour Organization and its Treatment of Colonial Workers after 1919

Epistemic Inequalities, the ILO, and Labour History in the Global South

In this episode, Kim König and Thomas Kaal sit down with Ulrike Lindner, Professor of Modern History at the University of Cologne, to talk about the research behind her lecture on epistemic inequalities in the Global South and their role in reproducing social hierarchies. Drawing on archival work on the International Labour Organization and its discussions of so‑called “native labour” in the 1920s, they explore how she traces the exclusion of Black experts, the authority granted to European imperial insiders, and the ways these knowledge practices shaped ILO policies on colonial and forced labour in the decades before the Second World War.

Epistemic Inequalities and their Consequences: The International Labour Organization and its Treatment of Colonial Workers after 1919

The lecture will first address the significance of epistemic inequalities in the Global South and work out why these are often prerequisites for the persistence of durable social inequalities. It will then analyse the International Labour Organization (ILO) and its treatment of colonial, non-white workers in the 1920s as an example of the consequences of epistemic inequalities. The ILO, founded in 1919, deliberately excluded black experts from its discussions of ‘native labour’, relying instead on European experts with long imperial careers. These experts were generally influenced by racist prejudices against indigenous workers. They greatly affected the ILO's policies on colonial and forced labour before the Second World War. Ulrike Lindner is Professor of Modern History at the University of Cologne. Her research interests lie in colonial and global history. She has worked on the comparative history of European empires, postcolonial questions, gender and empire, and issues of colonial and indentured labour. Recent publications include a special issue on The Production and Reproduction of Social Inequalities: Perspectives from the Global South (co-edited with Michaela Pelican and M. Eresso) in ZANJ, 8 (2025).

Queering German History: Still a Vital and Viable Endeavour?

What difference can queer perspectives make in our understanding of the German past and in present-day conversations around sexual and gender diversity? Having taught and published on LGBT history for several years in Berlin, London, and other places, Benno Gammerl takes this opportunity to reflect on the impact of such work. Looking at experiences and struggles of same-sex loving and gender-nonconforming people in Germany since around 1900, the talk discusses whether we should continue doing queer history in spite of the criticism that it essentializes sexual identity categories, and against powerful pushback from right-wing and other parts of the political spectrum in the East and West. Benno Gammerl is Professor of History of Gender and Sexuality at the European University Institute in Florence. His work addresses oral, emotional, queer-feminist, and intersectional histories. He is currently researching how bi-cultural couples in Germany have intimately navigated diversity since the 1960s. In 2023 he published Queer. Eine deutsche Geschichte vom Kaiserreich bis heute.

Queer Perspectives: New Ways of Understanding German History

In this episode, host Kim König speaks with Benno Gammerl (European University Institute in Florence) about the research underlying his lecture on “Queering German history: Still a vital and viable endeavor?”. They explore what it means to “queer” history, both as a critical practice and as a methodological approach for rethinking established historical narratives. Benno Gammerl discusses why queering remains a vital tool for understanding German history and reflects on its implications for historiography more generally. They also consider how this perspective can offer valuable insights to scholars whose work may not explicitly engage with queer history.

Decolonising the Natural History Collections of Empire

This lecture, with a focus on India, aims to understand this important archive of knowledge of the natural world collected and organised in the context of the empire in the light of recent historiography on botany and empire. It highlights the importance of creating an inventory and digitally repatriating botanical specimens held primarily in British institutions, and highlights efforts for cultural remediation. The lecture examines neglected literature and networks in the imperial scientific network, which were crucial to what was a prodigious scientific renaissance in natural history and environmental understanding in the imperial context from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century. Vinita Damodaran is Professor of South Asian History at the University of Sussex and a specialist in the history of modern India with particular interests in environmental change, identity and resistance in Eastern India. Her research ranges from the social and political history of Bihar to the environmental history of South Asia, including using historical records to understand climate change in the Indian Ocean World. Her many publications include the books Nature and the Orient, Essays on the Environmental History of South and South-East Asia (1998), British Empire and the Natural World: Environmental Encounters in South Asia(2010), Climate Change and the Humanities (2017), Geography in Britain after the Second World War (2019), and Commonwealth Forestry and Environmental History: Empire, Forests and Colonial Environments in Africa, the Caribbean, South Asia and New Zealand (2020). At Sussex, Professor Damodaran is also director of the Centre for World Environmental History.