Labouring Lives

This option enables students in the second year to pursue labour history. It follows on from the IA Sources option on ‘Labours Lost’, but students need not have taken that option to take this IB option. This Research Project is organised thematically and covers a range of places across the globe from the eighteenth to the twentieth century. Students will gain an understanding of the contingency of labour forms, the breadth of labour history, the range of different approaches, and the relationship between individual experience and economic patterns.

The seminars in 2023-24 will focus on the theme of Labour Conflict and will offer two classes each on conflict in the context of: Caribbean slavery; nineteenth-century France and the French Empire; abolition and caste in South Asia; and activists and labour movements in twentieth-century Europe. Each class will examine a selection of primary sources, the ways in which these sources have been investigated to date and the ways in which students may choose to use them, alongside providing guidance to learn how to plan, design and execute a small research project.