The Ports-meets-Containerships international workshop centered on main results and important outputs from Ports - Department of Social Anthropology (uio.no) and Container Ships - Department of Social Anthropology (uio.no). Two full days were dedicated to the presentations of individual articles prepared for a special issue on ports cities, the environment and labour. The final day hosted the closing conference of the NRC-funded ‘dis(assembling) the Life Cycle of Container ships’ where main results from the project’s participants were presented and discussed. The workshop gathered anthropologists based in Europe and the US, specializing on economic anthropology, infrastructure, labour and the shipping industry.
The event was held from 13-15 December in the Baltic port city of Gdańsk. The workshop was hosted at the outstanding premises of the Europejskie Centrum Solidarności/European Solidarity Centre. This is a cultural institution and museum commemorating the Solidarność revolution and the collapse of communism in Europe, but it also offers an educational centre, a research and study centre, an archive, a library and a mediatheque. The building is located in the historical area of the Solidarity Square, next to the Gdańsk Shipyard. Dr. Jacek Kołtan, Director’s Representative for Research at the European Solidarity Centre, took the workshop participants through the important history of the yard, the shipyard strikes and the solidarity movement.
