CfP – The Ethics of Slaving – IMC Leeds 2025

Update (21/5/2025): We have filled our spare paper slot – Broderick Haldane-Unwin (University of Oxford) will be presenting on ‘Captivity and Credit: Gregory the Great and the Cost of Liberation in Late Antique Italy’. Thank you for your interest!

There is a free slot on our Leeds panel, ‘Morality and Economy IV: The Ethics of Slaving’ (Wed 9 July, 1630-1800), as one of the speakers has had to pull out. Please share with anyone you think might be interested! The deadline  for submissions is 4 June.

Submit your 100 word abstract via Call for Papers. Focus on Late Antiquity / Early Middle Ages, broadly defined, preferred. The session abstract below (drafted with the original 3 papers in mind) shows the kind of issues we’re interested in, but other approaches are welcome.

Session abstract: The last decade has seen increasing scholarly interest in both medieval slavery and the medieval moral economy. This panel brings these historiographies into conversation, situating slavery within the broader economic and religious history of the Middle Ages. There was no slavery abolition movement in the early medieval period, and ecclesiastical institutions had numerous slaves and dependents. Indeed, churchmen prescribed enslavement as penance for immoral crimes. Yet ecclesiastics also sought to ransom and redeem war captives facing unfreedom. The mode of slaving, the identity of the enslaver, and the background of the enslaved person all had the potential to shape the contemporary perception of enslavement as legitimate or illegitimate. Slaving practices, then, bring into focus the boundaries and interactions between the moral and immoral economy in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages.
Please feel free to email any informal, initial enquiries to jrb49@leicester.ac.uk 
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