This volume stems from an international conference entitled ‘Being Everybody’s Slaves: Public Slavery in Ancient and Modern World’, which was held at Newcastle University on 22–4 March 2018. The event was part of the ‘Servi Publici: Everybody’s Slaves (SPES)’ research project that was based at Newcastle University from 2016 to 2018 and received funding under a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship (H2020-MSCA-IF-2015, grant agreement no. 704716).1¹ However, it would be inaccurate to define this special issue as the publication of the proceedings of that conference. This volume, in fact, marks a significant departure from it in terms of scope and ambition. The outbreak of the (still ongoing) global pandemic of coronavirus disease in 2019 (COVID-19) seriously affected its production in terms of both publication timeline and the number of contributions. Some papers presented at the conference have been significantly revised, whilst others have been withdrawn by the authors after discussion with the editor. Moreover, a revised version of the comments provided by the chair of one of the conference sessions has been included at the end of the volume by way of conclusion.

中文翻译：

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成为所有人的奴隶？构筑问题

本卷源于 2018 年 3 月 22 日至 4 日在纽卡斯尔大学举行的题为“成为每个人的奴隶：古代和现代世界的公共奴隶制”的国际会议。该活动是“ Servi Publici：每个人的奴隶 (SPES) ”的一部分' 2016 年至 2018 年在纽卡斯尔大学开展的研究项目，并获得了 Marie Skłodowska-Curie 个人奖学金（H2020-MSCA-IF-2015，赠款协议号 704716）的资助。1 ¹但是，将这一特刊定义为该会议记录的出版是不准确的。事实上，这本书在范围和雄心方面与它有很大的不同。2019 年（仍在持续的）全球冠状病毒病大流行（COVID-19）的爆发在出版时间和投稿数量方面都严重影响了其制作。在会议上提交的一些论文已经过重大修改，而另一些则在与编辑讨论后被作者撤回。此外，作为结论，已将其中一次会议主席提供的评论的修订版包含在卷末。