ADHILAC conference to bring international historians to Gibraltar

Gibraltar will host the 15th international meeting of the Association of Latin American and Caribbean Historians (ADHILAC) from September 9 to 13, with academics from across Europe, the Americas and beyond gathering to examine the history of mobility across the Atlantic and Pacific. 

The conference, titled The history of mobility in the Atlantic and the Pacific: People, goods, ships, ideas, and routes between the continents and islands, will be held at the Sunborn Hotel. 

The programme includes a series of keynote and special lectures, panel discussions and parallel academic sessions covering subjects including migration, slavery, trade, women’s mobility, political change, capitalism, religion, war and intellectual exchanges. 

The conference will open on September 9 with an inauguration at the Aurora Ballroom from 4pm to 5pm. 

The speakers will include; the Minister for the Environment, Sustainability, Climate Change and Education, Dr John Cortes; Mayor of La Linea Juan Franco; and President of ADHILAC Jorge Enrique Elias Caro. 

The opening lecture will be delivered by Wim Klooster of Clark University and will examine the stages of Jewish migration to the Americas during the 17th century. 

The opening day will also include a panel focusing specifically on Gibraltar as an Atlantic-Mediterranean intersection. 

The panel will feature Richard Garcia of the Gibraltar Heritage Trust speaking about Gibraltar as a crucible for migration, alongside presentations on Gibraltarians in Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago and Argentina during the Second World War and Gibraltar’s connections with the Atlantic. 

The programme continues on September 10 with a keynote lecture by Paul Lovejoy of York University on Equiano and the Black Atlantic. 

Sessions throughout the day will cover the slave trade and slavery, commodities, women and mobility, Jewish communities along the Atlantic, ancient and early modern mobility, wars and political change, and European immigration to the Americas. 

Further keynote and parallel sessions will take place on September 11. 

Michael Zeuske of the University of Bonn will deliver a keynote lecture on ships and Atlantic ports in history, while Stefan Rinke of Freie Universität Berlin will examine aviation, modernity and the German presence in Latin America between 1919 and 1945. 

Other sessions will address international mobility, religion, memory, capitalism, women’s mobility, voyages across the ocean and exchanges and connections. 

The conference will also include special lectures by Aviva Chomsky of Salem State College, on globalisation, migration and indigenous identities, and David Wheat of Michigan State University, covering the story of an Afro-Caribbean widow who travelled between at least seven Atlantic ports in the late 16th century. 

The ADHILAC General Assembly will take place on September 12, including the election of the association’s board of directors for the 2026-2030 period. 

Sessions that day will examine European immigration to the Americas, slave trade and slavery, mobility from the East to the Americas and intellectual mobility. 

The closing lecture will be delivered by Sven Beckert of Harvard University, who will speak on how to rethink the history of capitalism. 

The academic programme will conclude before delegates journey to Ceuta on September 13. 

The conference programme also includes activities outside Gibraltar, including a city tour of La Linea de la Concepción and a flamenco night, as well as a Latin night at Playa Santa Barbara.