2026-richard-robinson-business-history-workshops

6th BIENNIAL 

RICHARD ROBINSON BUSINESS HISTORY WORKSHOP

The Past & Present of Work: 
Histories of Labor and Its Place in Business
 

PORTLAND STATE UNIVERSITY

April 30 - May 2, 2026 | Portland OR

(All times listed are Pacific Daylight Time)

All panels shown in the program are FREE and Open to the Public. 
Those interested in attending the panels are welcome to read the papers beforehand. 
For access to the papers, please email psu.business.history.workshop@gmail.com
 

Co-organizers:
Chia Yin Hsu (Portland State University)
Thomas M. Luckett (Portland State University)
Erika Vause (St. John’s University)
 

SCHEDULE OF EVENTS

THU April 30th · SMSU 294
 

6:00 pm · RECEPTION
Refreshments | Meet & Greet

6:30 pm · KEYNOTE LECTURE

by Stefano Bellucci | International Institute of Social History & Leiden University
“Contradictions of Freedom: African Labor Relations in Historical Perspective”
 

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FRI May 1st · SMSU 328/9

8:30–9:00    Coffee

9:00–10:45    1 Mercantilist & Peri-Industrial Labor Discipline

Chair: Chia Yin Hsu

• Flavian Minel (University of Perpignan & Lyon 3 Jean Moulin University), “Governing Labor as a Strategic Resource: Workforce Regulation, Mobility, and Institutional Conflict at the Pennautier Woolen Manufactory (1696–1740s)”
• Roberto Rossi (University of Palermo), “Colonial Proto-Management: Discipline, Coercion, and Accounting in the Obrajes of the Spanish Americas, Eighteenth Century”
• Noelle Turtur (European University Institute), “From Imperial Tribute to Fascist Extraction: Forced Labor at the Prasso Mining Concession in Jubdo”

10:45–11:00    Break

11:00–12:45    2 Plantations & Mines: Financing, Recruiting, & Debt Bondage

Chair: Erika Vause

• Önder Eren Akgül (Northwestern University), “‘Life under Bondage and Domination’: The Çiftlik Business, Dispossession, and the Labor Regimes in the Late Ottoman Commercial Heartland”
• Ritesh Kumar Jaiswal (University of Delhi & University of Bonn), “Chettiars & the World of Indian Migrants and Non-European Capital in the Bay of Bengal Rim of the Indian Ocean”
• Rebekah McCallum (Independent Scholar), “Labor Recruitment Strategies for Company-Owned Tea Plantations in India: The Assam Labor Board, 1915–1933”

12:45–2:30    Lunch

2:30–4:15    3 Indentures, Labor Migrations, & Local/Indigenous Entrepreneurship

Chair: Thomas Luckett

•  Johan Mathew (Rutgers University), “Coercive Care: Maintaining Human Capital in the Witwatersrand Gold Mines, 1902–1950”
• Dexnell Peters (University of West Indies at Mona) & Jamelia Harris (University of Warwick), “The Business Sector, Transition of Labor Systems and its Legacies in the Nineteenth-Century and Present-Day British Caribbean”
• Sally Eunsong Yi (Princeton University), “‘Processing Aliens and Merchandise’: Trade, Immigration, and Industrialization in the Mariana Islands”

4:15–4:45    Break

4:45–6:30    4 Small Business, Specialty Service, & Self-Employment

Chair: Erika Vause

• Ronny Regev (Hebrew University of Jerusalem), “Humble Ventures: Rethinking the Work and Economic Lives of Small-Business Owners in the United States, 1880–1920”
• Robert P. Kaminski (University of Florida), “The Business of Brewing Labor: Labor-Relations Strategies in Late Nineteenth-Century Milwaukee and New York Breweries”
• Xavier Jou-Badal (Pompeu Fabra University), “Gendered Labor Hierarchies and Mobility in the Chocolate Factory, Barcelona, 1910–1936”

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SAT May 2nd · SMSU 328/9

8:30–9:00    Coffee

9:00–10:15    5 Skills, Expertise, Identity, & Perceptions of Productive Work

Chair: Thomas Luckett

• Hunter Moskowitz (Northeastern University), “‘Practical Men’: White Patriarchal Skill in the North American Textile Industry”
• Santosh Kumar Rai (Delhi University), “Skills and Expertise in Business: Systems of Job Training & the Handloom Industry in Colonial North India”

10:15–10:30    Break

10:30–12:15    6 Technologies of Productivism: Animal Labor, Surveillance, & Automation

Chair: Chia Yin Hsu

• David Schley (Durham University), “Can a Horse Go on Strike? Streetcar Drivers and Interspecies Labor in New York City, 1865–1893”
• Bruno Settis (Gramsci Foundation Emilia-Romagna), “Authority and Surveillance in Mass Production: The Case of Fiat”
• Salem Elzway (Vanderbilt University), “The Cybernetic Assembly Line: Robots, Technopolitics, and the Lordstown Strike of 1972”

12:15–1:45    Lunch

1:45–3:30    7 Public-Private Welfare & Management: Colonial, Collectivist, & Neoliberal

Chair: Erika Vause

• Trish Kahle (Georgetown University in Qatar), “The Heart of Electrical Empire: Meralco and its Employees in the American Colonial Philippines”
• Simon Neumaier (European University Institute), “Private Work for Public Consumers: Labor Management and Public Provisioning in Red Vienna”
• Nicholas C. Scott (University of Chicago), “Neoliberal Managers and Territorial Labor Organizers: The Case of Chile’s Radio and Television Industry, 1965–1990”

3:30–4:00    Break

4:00–5:45     8 The Labor of Managers/Entrepreneurs: White-Collar Work, Niche Knowledge, & Social Status

Chair: Chia Yin Hsu

• Aleksandr Turbin (University of Illinois Chicago), “‘German,’ ‘Russian,’ ‘Kunstovsky’: Workplace Hierarchies and the Strategic Performance of Identities in a ‘German’ Firm in the Early Twentieth-Century Russian Far East”
• Bryna Goodman (University of Oregon), “The Labor of the Exchange: Employment and Mobility in an Early Chinese Financial Bubble”
• Christophe Lécuyer (Sorbonne University Jussieu), “The Corporation as a Total Institution: Management-Employee Relations in Silicon Valley”

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