RSPH/OPG PhD candidate Thomas van Gaalen is one of the organizers of a symposium, entitled Solidarity in action: understanding political practices of solidarity in past and present. The event takes place in Nijmegen, 28 February 2025. The symposium will kick off with a 1EC PhD-workshop offered by OPG.
Registration.
This event is a collaboration between the RICH Colonial Relations and Structures group and the national Research School for Political History (OPG).
Understanding practices and ideas of solidarity
The term solidarity has circulated broadly, transcending space and time—from miners’ strikes in the 1900s to global leftist guerilla networks in the 1960s, and from party conferences to environmental demonstrations. In recent years, historical scholarship has seen a renewed interest in conceptualizing this slippery but widely used term, paying close attention to the ‘imaginative’ capacities of the concept and its tendency to reflect and express new political relations.
But what happens after a group of people has invoked the concept of solidarity to engage in a new political relation? When implemented on the ground, in the streets or in the union hall, expressions of solidarity become the basis of divergent practices and tactics. Sometimes, solidarity becomes a rallying cry to draw attention to a particular, neglected cause elsewhere: think, for instance, of the student protesters who recently occupied university buildings in solidarity with Palestine. For some interwar unions, however, solidarity helped cultivate a local in-crowd, or imagined community, of people belonging to a certain social class and profession. What particular actions and strategies have emerged from invocations of solidarity over time?
This symposium aims to bring conceptual scholarship on solidarity in conversation with analyses of the nitty-gritty, on-the-ground particularities of historical practices performed in the name of solidarity. What has solidarity meant to different historical actors and social movements? How did people turn solidarity into effective action? How have historical actors dealt with limits, inequal power relations and unexpected outcomes when trying to put solidarity into practice?
Solidarity for academics?
Focusing on the ways in which solidarity has functioned as a political strategy in a myriad of contexts, the symposium will:
The event will consist of academic panels, a PhD workshop and a keynote lecture by Professor Kirwin Shaffer (Pennsylvania State University). Professor Shaffer researches the global history of the twentieth century, written through the eyes of anarchists in Latin America. His work explores how anarchists and non-state leftist movements described and analyzed global events from the lenses of the Global South and from the bottom-up. Professor Shaffer is currently a research fellow at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study, where he is conducting research work for a new project.
Furthermore, the event will include a roundtable on solidarity for academics: with representatives from groups involved in the recent WO in Actie-protests, labor unions and researchers who have engaged in organizing transnational collaborative projects, we will discuss the role of solidarity in academia. In there such a thing as “academic solidarity”? How could academics – in light of impending cuts, and censorship policies – organize themselves in a solidary way? And how might researchers engage in transnational exchange – particularly when such an exchange concerns a relation between institutions in formerly colonized and colonizing regions – in a solidary, egalitarian and fair fashion?
PhD workshop
The symposium will kick off with a 1EC PhD-workshop offered by OPG. In the workshop, PhD candidates (and RMA students in the process of writing their thesis) affiliated with OPG and/or Radboud University’s Colonial Relations and Structures Research Group will discuss how to analyze and understand political ideas and practices, as well as theories and methodologies to grasp their interrelation. The workshop will offer a backdrop to the discussions on solidarity taking place during the rest of the symposium, but will also help early career scholars with a broad interest in political ideas and practices grapple with themes of relevance.
To prepare for the workshop, each participant submits a short written reflection (ca. 750-1000 words), either based on their dissertation or on other research, in which they address how they treat and analyze the interrelation of political ideas and practices. Participants are asked to read the other submissions before the workshop, and to prepare an oral response to one particular reflection. In the workshop, participants are also asked to introduce their specific questions, issues and insights—whether methodological, conceptual, or empirical—with regard to understanding the relation between political practices and ideas using an empirical example from their work. Participants are encouraged to bring a photograph or object to illustrate their source material and underpin their main points.
To sign up for the workshop and receive more information on the assignments, please fill out this form and state that you register for the workshop.
Program
9.00-11.30 EOS N 01.770 PhD workshop hosted by René Koekkoek (Utrecht University) and Bram Mellink (University of Amsterdam); sign up here
12.00-12.45 EOS N 01.780 Opening lecture by Thomas van Gaalen (Radboud University)
12.45-13.00 EOS N 01.780 Coffee break
13.00-14.30 EOS N 01.770 Panel 1: Solidarity and community
Speakers: Gaard Kets (Radboud University), Eveliene Veen (University of Münster), Margo Groenewoud (Radboud University), Thijs te Braake (RMA Utrecht University)
Chair: Fons Meijer (Radboud University)
13.00-14.30 EOS N 01.780 Panel 2: Solidarity as support
Speakers: Rachel Gillett (Utrecht University), Peter van Dam (University of Amsterdam), Marit van de Warenburg (Utrecht University), Bastiaan Bouwman (Utrecht University)
Chair: Nino Vallen (Radboud University)
14.30-15.00 EOS N 01.780 Coffee break
15.00-16.00 MM 03.650 Roundtable: solidarity for academics
Speakers: Lotje Siffels (Radboud University), Laura Visser-Maessen (Radboud University), Karolien van Teijlingen (Radboud University), Dries Lyna (Radboud University), Gaard Kets (Radboud University)
Chair: Thomas van Gaalen (Radboud University)
16.00-17.00 MM 03.650 Keynote lecture: Kirwin Shaffer (Pennsylvania State University, NIAS)
17.00 Cultuurcafé Drinks (optional)
Registration: Symposium: Solidarity in Action | Radboud University