Friday 27 November 2026, Macquarie University, Sydney
What did it mean to feel safe or secure for early modern populations? How did
people persist and build futures for themselves and their families in challenging
conditions? This workshop aims to fill a key gap in our knowledge of how people
created conditions to feel safe during times of existential danger or crisis in early
modern Europe.
Safety and security can be defined in multiple ways: economic, social, political,
physical, psychological, cultural and emotional. In the context of modern history,
especially as it pertains to twentieth-century constructions of ‘risk’, there is now an
established literature on the development of health and safety in workplaces,
insurance and risk, ‘risk society’, including nuclear anxieties and environmental
concerns, and in relation to child-rearing and childhood opportunities, where
children’s ‘worlds’ are reduced by safety concerns. Within colonial contexts, there is
a literature on ‘cultural safety’ and its absence, as a dimension of security for
marginalised groups. There is some work on early modern security, particularly in
relation to political and national security, physical safety, and individual freedoms,
and growing work on economic insecurity and its impacts. Religion is an important
part of this story, but people not only lived for the next life but the one on earth.
Parents imagined futures for their children; children hoped for themselves; families
aspired to long lineages and survival over generations.
This workshop hopes to build on and expand this foundational research to consider
how early modern people acquired the social and emotional resources to persist ‘at
the end of the world’. We welcome papers for the period 1400-1800 and for any
geographical context.
We now call for papers that elucidate this topic. Papers might consider but are not
limited to:
- Definitions and practices of safety and security
- Safety and security for individuals, groups, nations and other collectives
- Positive emotions as a counterpoint to fear and anxiety
- Consolations and comfort during challenging times
- The emotions of resilience and persistence
- Hope for the future as a dimension of safety
- Imagination as a place for safe feeling or future building
Papers should typically be twenty minutes long; proposals for panels and
roundtables are also welcome. If you would like to propose something less
conventional, please do get in touch. Hybrid options are a possibility; please indicate
on your proposal if that is desired.
Please send a title, 200-word abstract and two-sentence bio for each speaker to katie.barclay@mq.edu.au by 30th JUNE.