Since 2018, the Bonn Center of Dependency and Slavery Studies (BCDSS) unites internationally renowned scholars researching historic forms of strong asymmetrical dependencies. The current academic year at the BCDSS (2021/22) is dedicated to “Norms, Institutions, and Practices of Dependency”. The end of this period will be marked by an international conference which aims at evaluating the role of institutional regulations and normative concepts in forming and perpetuating relations of asymmetrical dependencies. To this end, a variety of legal texts, sacred codes, or case studies will be examined for normative conceptions of servitude, dependency, and unfreedom, and for resulting practices of enforcing, subverting, or interpreting them. The conference will consist of an opening lecture on the theory of asymmetrical dependency and altogether three panels which focus on different aspects of the topic.