Deindustrialization

ROUNDTABLE: DEINDUSTRIALIZATION AND POPULISM
2024-12-09 09:30 - 11:30 UTC | Zoom
Brexit and the 2016 US presidential election threw “populism” into the spotlight. Populism, from both the left (Jean-Luc Melenchon, Bernie Sanders) and the right (Marine Le Pen, Donald Trump) has come to define the politics of deindustrializing societies. How do we make sense of this groundswell? Join DePOT as we explore populism and deindustrialization.
Wednesday December 9 (9:30AM Eastern Time).
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Chair:
Amber Ward
Participants:

Filippo Sbrana, University for Foreigners of Perugia
Marion Fontaine, Science Po
Mike Makin-Waite, independent scholar
Manuela Vinai, University of Turin
Lachlan Mackinnon, Cape Breton University
Steven High, Concordia University.

ROUNDTABLE: DEINDUSTRIALIZATION AND THE LEFT
2025-01-21 09:30 - 11:30 UTC | Zoom
View the event recording here
What happens to workers’ parties when work dries up? Deindustrialization has presented a profound challenge to parties of the left and centre-left, with their traditional base in the trade union movement becoming increasingly precarious. In this roundtable, DePOT affiliates will explore how deindustrialization affected the political left, how parties and organizations of the left responded to deindustrialization, and the future of how the political left might adapt to the post-industrial moment.
Tuesday January 21 (9:30AM Eastern Time).
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Participants:

Gilda Zazzara, University of Ca’Foscari Venice
Fred Burrill, University of New Brunswick
Marion Fontaine, Sciences Po
Xavier Vigna, Université Paris-Nanterre
Indranil Chakraborty, Concordia University
Manuela Vinai, University of Turin
Graham Latham, Concordia University.

ROUNDTABLE: IN CONVERSATION WITH TIM STRANGLEMAN
2025-02-12 09:30 - 11:30 (America/New_York) | Zoom
Join his former students and colleagues to celebrate the career of Tim Strangleman, DePOT co-founder and author of many books on the sociology of deindustrialization.
Wednesday February 12 (9:30AM Eastern Time).
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Sherry Lee Linkon, Georgetown University
Jefferson Cowie, Vanderbilt University
Gilda Zazzara, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice
Thomas Wilson, University of Kent
Tim Strangleman, University of Kent

ROUNDTABLE: NEW RESEARCH IN DEINDUSTRIALIZATION STUDIES
2025-04-24 09:30 - 11:30 (America/New_York) | Zoom
Journey from Poland to the American Midwest in our next roundtable, featuring research from seven DePOT affiliates and chaired by Steven High!
Thursday April 24th (9:30AM Eastern Time).
Register on Eventbrite to get the Zoom link and receive reminder emails ahead of the roundtable!
Chairperson: Steven High (Concordia University)
Yuan Yi (Concordia University) , “Deindustrialization: A Useful Category for Challenging Linear History.”
Anna Ruth Guildea (Scuola Normale Superiore), “Masculinity, Occupational Change, and Support for the Radical Right in Europe.”
Cory Haala (University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point), “Fighting Deindustrialization in the American Midwest, from Factory to Farm.”
Nora Küttel (University of Halle), “Unveiling the Emotional and Social Consequences of Deindustrialisation: The Case of East Germany’s Shipbuilding Industry.”
Mart Chmielewski (European University Institute), “Bra-Making and Postsocialist Transformation: Privatization, Global Capital, and the Reshaping of Industry in Central Poland”.
Monika Glosowitz (University of Silesia), “Narratives of Women from Coal Mining Families from Upper Silesian Coal Basin. An Artivist Research Project.”
Melissa Meade (Seton Hall University), “Digital Memories in Centralia, Pennsylvania and The Reshaping of Labor Narratives”

Désindustrialisation, nation, immigration : quelles réponses politiques ? / Deindustrialization, Nation, Immigration: What Political Responses?
2025-06-19 08:00 - 2025-06-21 17:00 UTC
Deindustrialization, Nation, Immigration: What Political Responses?
Deindustrialization, which began affecting North America and Northwestern Europe in the 1950s, unevenly impacted various workforces. These groups, which have experienced mass layoffs and relocations due to globalization and trade liberalization, include both men and women, national and immigrant workers, and racialized individuals, some of whom have been replaced by lower-paid, less protected labor forces. This powerful movement gained momentum in the late 1970s and early 1980s, at a time when the labor movement was at its peak and social democratic parties held power, particularly in Western Europe.
In this context, deindustrialization profoundly destabilized the labor movement and left-wing parties, which faced an immense political, strategic, and intellectual challenge. This challenge arised from the disappearance of an industrial model that provided a framework, the crisis of countercyclical economic and social policies, and, last but not least, the erosion of their electoral base. Simultaneously, chauvinistic or xenophobic reactions, which traditionally accompany economic and political crises, have multiplied, aiding the consolidation of far-right movements that denounce the presence of immigrants, unfair foreign competition, and even local populations or entire regions perceived as burdens taking advantage of the social welfare system.
While some of these issues regularly capture media and public attention, it is clear that proper historical analyses linking these different elements are still lacking. The same applies to comparisons between regional and national situations.
The aim of this conference is to shed light on these different contexts from a historical perspective, and to rearticulate these contemporary phenomena to understand how different forms of deindustrialization challenge issues of race, immigration, and nation. It also seeks to explore how these processes transform the political responses that can be offered to these issues. Case studies focusing on a particular situation, territory, or group are welcome (in Europe and North America during the late 20th-early 21st century but also in the global South). We also encourage papers that cross categories, compare territories, or vary the scales of analysis.
Several non-exclusive avenues of inquiry may be explored, including: Race, nation, and immigrant labor; Between powerlessness and action, between blindness and awareness: what responses from workers’ movements?; Populism, far-right, and deindustrialization.

Conference News
The program is now available in English and French.

The call for papers is now available on our website! Read and download it in French or English here.
Frequently Asked Questions
As conference organization proceeds, we will be updating this page with more information about venues, conference hotels, program information, and more information to help prepare attendance.

ROUNDTABLE: IS THE FIELD OF DEINDUSTRIALIZATION STUDIES TOO ONE SIDED?
2025-09-26 09:00 - 11:00 (America/Toronto) | Zoom
Oral history has been the primary methodology of the field of deindustrialization studies for the past quarter century. The field is therefore anchored in working-class lives and the lived interior of deindustrialization. In a draft paper, DePOT member Stefan Berger provocatively asks if the field has become too one-sided as a result? He argues that “the field would gain in multi-perspectivity by moving away from its one-sided focus on working-class memories of deindustrialization.” The virtual session will begin with a 15-minute presentation from Stefan Berger and we will then hear from a series of respondents (who have read the paper) for 5-6 minutes each. It will then be opened for questions and comments.
Friday September 26th 2025 at 9:00am eastern time
Register on Eventbrite to get the Zoom link and receive reminder emails ahead of the roundtable!
Chairperson: Steven High (Concordia University)
Presentation: Stefan Berger (Ruhr-Universitaet Bochum)
Respondents: Fred Burrill (University of New Brunswick), Xavier Vigna (University of Paris-Nanterre), Amber Ward (University of St. Andrews), Bharat Sundararajan (University of St. Andrews), Emiliano Aguilar (University of Notre Dame)

ROUNDTABLE - POLICIES AND PROGRAMS: DEINDUSTRIALIZATION AND THE ENVIRONMENT
2025-11-07 09:30 - 11:00 (America/Toronto) | Zoom
DePOT’s Deindustrialization and the Environment working group is pleased to host its first roundtable, Policies and Programs: Deindustrialization and the Environment. This session brings together eight scholars whose research examines the intersections of industrial decline, environmental activism and remediation, and policy responses by a variety of levels of government. Presentations will consider how states, companies, and communities respond to the environmental legacies of deindustrialization, including questions surrounding the construction of uneven geographies of remediation and sacrifice zones. Drawing from several national and local contexts, the panel will highlight how difference policy frameworks shape the aftermath of deindustrialized spaces and landscapes.

Friday November 7th at 9:30am Eastern Time

Presenters:

Greg Wilson (University of Akron)
Valerio Caruso (Institute for Mediterranean Studies)
Petra Dolata (University of Calgary) & Julian Rioux (University of Saskatchewan)
Shouvik Mukhopadhyay (University of Calcutta) & Indranil Chakraborty (Fanshawe College)
Chris Walley (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
David Beorlegui (University of the Basque Country)
Steven High (Concordia University)

(Un)just Transitions?: Deindustrialization and the Environment
2026-06-18 - 2026-06-20
(Un)just Transitions?: Deindustrialization and the Environment
The call for papers is now available! Read and download it in French or English here.
What can the study of deindustrialization add to our understanding of environmental history? And conversely – what can the study of environmental history contribute to deindustrialization studies? Answering these questions will be the focus of the 2026 Deindustrialization and the Politics of Our Time (DePOT) annual conference, whose theme is “Deindustrialization and the Environment.”
Transitions are central in both environmental and deindustrialization studies. In environmental history, these transitions include the agricultural and industrial revolutions, and changes in energy sources from wood to fossil fuels, to renewables. These have been explored in the context of the legal system, labour, culture, economy and politics. Deindustrialization studies also centre on questions of transition. Studies might, for example, assess the impacts and transformations at work in the relationship between humans and nature in the decline, removal, or shift of industrial activity. The conference looks to explore these and other aspects of the intersection between deindustrialization and the environment.
Along with presentations and keynote addresses, the conference will include scheduled tours of relevant sites in Montreal.
We are pleased to welcome submissions for individual papers, panels, or roundtable discussions that speak to these and other themes including:

Toxic legacies, environmental remediation, “greening” and redevelopment initiatives.
Energy transitions
Worker health and safety, trade unionism and environmental justice
Citizen science
Climate politics, populism, and “just transitions”
Noxious deindustrialization
Industrial nature
Heritage and the environment

More information will follow in our conference program
