Workers and Politics
TORCH Labour Network Day Conference
Friday 12 June 2026, 11am-5.30pm
Learning Centre, Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities, University of Oxford
Free, but registration required.
If you would like to attend the conference as an audience member, please send a short note about yourself to labournetwork@torch.ox.ac.uk.
This interdisciplinary day conference investigates and draws lessons from moments, both contemporary and historical, in which workers navigated through, organized in, demonstrated against, and at times, successfully transformed the political orders in which they lived. While workers and other non-elite groups always operate in circumstances that limit their range of possible action, there are moments and arenas in which the political space is more or less hostile to collective action. Papers will be presented on how labour related to politics in democratic, colonial, and authoritarian contexts across several time periods and spaces. The conference will focus on the interaction between workers and political parties, military, police, and courts, (inter-)national and local public officials, planners, and administrators, and rural and urban authorities. Studies of workers’ experience of the stabilisation strategies of various forms of public and political authority will be a central concern.
Programme to be announced soon.
