International Conference, organized by «Matter of Distinction: Early Modern Hair, Race, Trade, and Multispecies History, 1650–1820» (SNSF Starting Grant) at the University of Lucerne on 8–10th of October 2026
Hyper-present on almost all heads and bodies, hair is a forceful matter of difference. It signals gender, class, sometimes religion or politics as well as racialized distinction. As such, hair connects and disconnects people and other species across the globe and through time. The conference «Global Histories of Hair, c. 1500–2026» brings together researchers working on hair as a matter of distinction around the early modern and modern world.
One of the conference’s focuses lies on the early modern era, during which human and animal hair circulated widely as material, commodity and medium of distinction. Worldwide, hair was cut, collected, traded, worn, described and transformed. Hair practices became closely entangled with ideas of social hierarchy, race, gender, labour, and bodily difference.
A second focus concerns later and contemporary constellations in which hair continues to function as a marker of distinction and inequality. This includes the ongoing global trade in hair as an important resource, racialized regulations of hair, the experience of hairlessness, and unequal access to hair care that is shaped by structural conditions.