In recent years, demands for historical justice have intensified in several national contexts in the form of claims to right the historical wrongs of European colonialism and the transatlantic slave trade by means of reparations. These demands have primarily been met with skepticism and distrust from national governments and a number of sections of civil society. In a context of growing grassroots activism primarily from black and indigenous communities around the world, an increasing number of political representatives are nevertheless starting to come out in support of material reparations. Reparations for the racialized descendants of European colonialism and transatlantic slavery is now a conversation in both Global North and Global South in a potentially unprecedented manner.

The broad goal of this workshop is to investigate the significance of a turn to greater acceptance of material reparations for colonialism and slavery, to investigate what widespread material reparations could look like, and to probe the terms on which reparations would be capable of both enacting repair and combating social inequality in capitalist, white supremacist, and settler colonial contexts.