International Institute of Social History

17/06/2026

Tomorrow’s the day! Our colleagues, ranging from archivists to collection conservation and preservation staff, will talk about the unique collections they handle every day and the wider issues and emotions these collections evoke. As well as presentations, there will be exhibitions and films showcasing highlights from the processing work of the last three years. Everybody's welcome to join, please sign up via [email protected]. You can find all the information and time table on our website: https://iisg.amsterdam/en/events/iisg-collection-day-2026

15/06/2026

Objects that Remember opens this afternoon, the exhibition by our colleagues, Rika Theo and Liona Li. The exhibition brings together materials connected to the suppression of protests and political activism in Hong Kong in recent years, and to the anti-communist purges in Indonesia that began in 1965. The exhibition runs one week, from Monday 15 to Friday 19 June. More information can be found here: https://iisg.amsterdam/en/events/exhibition-objects-remember

09/06/2026

What happens behind the scenes of an archive? Join us for the IISG Collection Day, where our collection processors share stories from their work with remarkable collections.

From medieval manuscripts and born-digital archives to the ethics of AI and the emotional impact of working with difficult histories, the programme offers a unique insight into archival practice. The day also celebrates the completion of the Bypass Project and includes exhibitions and film screenings from the IISG collections.

With talks and exhibitions from Jelle Verdijk, Daniel van Heusden, Rika Theo, Alaina Rose, Julia van der Knaap, Fidel Duran, Hawra Nissi, Rebecca Marti, Harriet Stroomberg, Rimke van der Bij, Mieke Stroo, Wendy Ettema, Lex Wouterloot and Liona Li Lok Yee.

Talks will be held in English; questions are welcome in Dutch.

📅 18 June 2026
🕓 12:00-18:00
📍 IISG, Cruquiusweg 31, Amsterdam
🔗 https://iisg.amsterdam/en/events/iisg-collection-day-2026

09/06/2026

The end of the nineteenth century marked the rise of labour conflict in the industrializing western world, as well as a general expansion of global trade and integration. In her talk, Anna Missiaia will talk about how she quantitatively tested the link between global price shocks and labour conflict during this period. To do so, she relies on provincial-level data on strike activity in Italy (1881-1911) and a measure of price shocks specific for each province based on import prices and provincial occupational shares. More information can be found on our website: https://iisg.amsterdam/en/events/labour-conflict-when-markets-integrate

08/06/2026

Next week, archival objects will take center stage during the exhibition Objects that Remember and the storytelling workshop What We Carry: Portable Homeland and Resistance in Exile.

✨The exhibition Objects that Remember brings together materials connected to the suppression of protests and political activism in Hong Kong in recent years, and to the anti-communist purges in Indonesia that began in 1965. In the exhibition we explore how objects carry memory across time and space, and how displaced people and objects negotiate the continuity of their struggles, remake homes, and imagine futures beyond exile.

The exhibition runs one week, from Monday 15 to Friday 19 June. On Monday we host the opening reception with talks from the curators Rika Theo and Liona Li and special guests. For more information and to sign up: https://iisg.amsterdam/en/events/exhibition-objects-remember

✨ What We Carry: Portable Homeland and Resistance in Exile extends the exhibition’s questions into a participatory setting. The storytelling workshop on 19 June invites participants to imagine displacement – something that may seems distance to some, yet remains an everyday reality for many across the world. The resulting works will be compiled into a collective zine or collage. Participants will receive a copy as a keepsake. If you would like to take part in this workshop, organised by Liona Li, Rika Theo, Julie Ren and Maggi W.H. Leung, please register before Friday 11 June 2026. More information: https://iisg.amsterdam/en/events/storytelling-workshop-what-we-carry

04/06/2026

The end of the nineteenth century marked the rise of labour conflict in the industrializing western world, as well as a general expansion of global trade and integration. In her talk, Anna Missiaia quantitatively tests the link between global price shocks and labour conflict during this period.

To do so, she relies on provincial-level data on strike activity in Italy (1881-1911) and a measure of price shocks specific for each province based on import prices and provincial occupational shares.

Check for more information our website

To do so, she relies on provincial-level data on strike activity in Italy (1881-1911) and a measure of price shocks specific for each province based on import prices and provincial occupational shares. She finds that negative shocks to the international price of silk cocoons, which represented a siz...

03/06/2026

Summer is just around the corner, and there are still plenty of wonderful events taking place this month that focus on our collections, the people behind them and the people who work with them.

As always, our events are free to attend. Please do register so we know you’re coming!

More info can be found on our website: https://iisg.amsterdam/en/events

02/06/2026

Heel trots, alweer, op onze collega Rosa Kösters. Zij gaat de komende jaren onderzoek doen naar verschillende burgercollectieven die tussen 1960 en 2025 sociale zekerheid probeerden te innoveren. Buiten de gevestigde instituties stonden er burgers op om actief veranderingen door te voeren rondom sociale zekerheid, op basis van hun eigen ervaringen.

Zo organiseerden oudere Marokkaanse arbeiders zich in het Comité Marokkaanse WAO-slachtoffers om uitvoeringsproblemen aan te kaarten, richtten vrouwen vakscholen op om herintreedsters toegang te geven tot passende beroepsopleidingen en streden mindervaliden mensen voor wetgeving om arbeidsparticipatie makkelijker te maken.

Al deze groepen wilden nieuwe vormen van sociale zekerheid opzetten, bestaande vormen verbeteren of streefden naar andere wetgeving. Veel van de archieven van deze groepen liggen (deels of helemaal) bij het IISG.

Vanaf januari 2027 gaat Rosa aan de slag met het onderzoek dat door het Instituut Gak-KNAW mogelijk wordt gemaakt.

Op de website van de KNAW staat een interview met Rosa Kösters: https://www.knaw.nl/nieuws/rosa-kosters-wint-instituut-gak-knaw-award-2026

Afbeelding: Landelijke manifestatie WAO-slachtoffers, Komitee Marokkaanse Arbeiders in Nederland (Amsterdam), IISG.
Foto uitreiking: Valerie van Os

01/06/2026

In early nineteenth-century Sri Lanka, slave descent as an index of ‘racial impurity’ became instrumentalized by aspiring elites. It served to evict from their community-in-the-making those who were considered unsuitable to their ambitions as a community.
Through the close reading of a constable’s list of inhabitants in the port city of Colombo, Nira Wickramasinghe will explore the idea of mixity and the formation of racial borders in the longue durée.
📅 2 June 2026
🕓 15:00-17:00
📍 IISG, Cruquiusweg 31, Amsterdam
🔗 https://iisg.amsterdam/en/events/seminar-micro-global-histories-slavery-sources-and-approaches

27/05/2026

Parchment that has been folded into the same shape for centuries is difficult to unfold. To make the material available digitally and to produce a high-quality scan, the parchment must be unfolded first. As you can see in the video, our conservation and preservation specialists use a special technique to do this!