Tag: economic history

20th World Economic History Congress

Steph

Call for sessions

The 20th World Economic History Congress will convene from 28 July–1 August 2025 in Lund, Sweden. The theme for the Congress is Equality and Sustainability Challenges, which highlights some of the central issues facing humanity today and also connects to a broad and diverse range of historical problems. To address both the challenges and to find insights from the historical record for that endeavour, a range of perspectives will be necessary.

The IEHA has a particularly strong desire to attract sessions related to this theme. However, submissions are welcome on the economic and social histories of all places and periods, and on the exploration of varied sources and methods, and on the theory and uses of economic history itself. We also invite members to employ and analyse diverse strategies for representing the past.

Sessions may be proposed by any member of the international economic history community, whatever their institutional affiliation or status, as well as by scholars in related disciplines. Given the diversity of our membership, we will consider any submission that advances the study, teaching and public presentation of economic history. We welcome panel proposals that highlight scholarship emerging from economic history, business history, financial history, demographic history, environmental history, global and world history, social history, urban and agrarian history, gender studies, material culture, methodological approaches to historical research, history of economics and economic thought, science and technology studies, and other related fields.

The programme of the Lund Congress will be organised on the same principles as previous Congresses. The 5-day Congress will have approximately 180 sessions, with each day divided into time blocks of 90 minutes each (two before lunch and two after lunch). As in the past, it will be possible to combine two sessions into larger coherent units.

The session proposals should contain:

  • Name, title, affiliation, and contact information of the session organiser
  • Possible co-organisers (optional)
  • Title of the session
  • Description of the session’s aim, contribution, and relevance (max 5,000 characters with blanks)
  • Researchers invited to participate in the session, or those already confirmed, and their affiliations

The call for sessions will close on January 31, 2024. Sessions should be submitted via the portal at at this link. Please note that unlike in past years, there will be ONLY ONE call for sessions. Decisions will be finalised in June 2024.

Fully-funded doctoral positions in economic history

Steph

The Unit for Economic History at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, has now an open call for applications to our Ph.D. program in economic history. I would be most grateful if you would be willing to help distribute this call to any student of yours who might be interested in applying.

Starting date is in September 2023. The positions are fully funded, salaried positions for four years. Two of the positions are open to applicants intending to do research on any topic in the field of economic history. The third position is open for applicants intending to do research in the field of business history.

Last day of application is: 2023-05-22

More information via the links below:

English: 3 PhD students in Economic History

https://web103.reachmee.com/ext/I005/1035/job?site=7&lang=UK&validator=9b89bead79bb7258ad55c8d75228e5b7&job_id=p29325

Seminar at the German Studies Association annual conference, Montreal, Canada

Steph

CfA: GSA Seminar “Made in Germany: Myths and Materiality of an Exporting Nation

Date: 5-8 October 2023

Deadline: 3 March 2023, 11:59 PST

How to apply: https://thegsa.secure-platform.com/47/

Convenors: William Glenn Gray (Purdue) and Katrin Schreiter (King’s College London)

This seminar will take place at the German Studies Association annual conference in Montreal, 5-8 October 2023. It invites participants to consider the centrality of export activity to society, culture, and politics in the German-speaking lands. Long before the “Made in Germany” label was affixed to products, trade fairs were a feature of German economic life; and the 19th and 20th centuries brought an even greater concentration on production for export. How did orientation toward distant markets inflect business innovation, product design, foreign relations, and political priorities? How did concerns about market share shape currency alignments, labor practices, and the domestic economy? What histories can be told about the lives of German commercial agents abroad, and what narratives did Germans craft about their most iconic exports? And how did German products impact societies abroad? The conveners welcome contributions from design history, material culture, business history, labor history, and beyond. Our goals are to reinvigorate the salience of economic themes within the GSA and to publish proceedings.

Participants will prepare brief research-based contributions (ca. 10 double-spaced pages) in response to the seminar’s guiding themes and prescribed readings. Each morning the seminar will discuss a selection of their pre-circulated contributions in a roundtable format. Completed seminar contributions are due September 5. The prospects for the publication of expanded seminar papers, whether as an edited volume or a journal special issue, will feature in the seminar’s closing discussion.

See also: https://thegsa.org/blog/cfa-seminar-participant-applications-gsa-2023#15.%20Exporting

If you have any questions about the seminar theme or the fit of your potential contribution, please contact Katrin Schreiter (katrin.schreiter@kcl.ac.uk).

Lecturer in Contemporary Economic History (University of Glasgow)

Steph

The School of Social and Political Sciences is seeking to appoint a Lecturer in Contemporary Economic History. The post holder will conduct research in an area of contemporary economic and/or business history as well as deliver teaching in the Economic and Social History subject area of the School of Social and Political Sciences. We especially welcome applicants with expertise related to sustainable development, business and globalisation, or energy and the environment, particularly focusing on or within the world regions of Asia or Africa. The successful post-holder will be based in the Economic and Social History subject area, which is home to the Centre for Business History in Scotland.

Submission date: 23 November 2022

For more information, go to: Lecturer in Contemporary Economic History at University of Glasgow (jobs.ac.uk)

CfP: Early encounters with coal

Steph

Early encounters with coal: Retrieving views from below

The rise of coal and steam-power in the nineteenth century is now widely recognised as an epochal historical event. It put the world-economy on a path to large-scale, climate-shattering combustion of fossil fuels. While these trajectories have been intensely studied in recent scholarship, we know far less about how coal and steam were perceived from subaltern positions. How did people react to this novel fuel and the technologies it animated when they slammed into their lives? Did they admire or fear them, wish to escape and eliminate them, or rather emulate and acquire their powers? Through what cultural filters were coal and steam viewed when each first began to take hold? While the stories of early coal and steam have been told from the perspective of inventors, manufacturers, merchants, colonial administrators and other agents of their dissemination, the voices from the other side have yet to be heard: colonised people; workers in mines and ports, on fields, boats and railroads; those who were dispossessed and displaced by the onrush of the first fossil economy. Most of these voices will inevitably be lost to the historical record. Some, however, might be retrieved by studying sources spanning a spectrum from oral traditions and folk songs via travelogues and popular science magazines to pamphlets and novels, to mention only some. We need to examine technologies of extraction as well as use, and thus set the histories of mining and supply alongside those of trade and consumption. A more focused effort to reconstruct the variety and tensions of early encounters with coal, especially as seen from below, is, we believe, not only possible but potentially valuable. It might illuminate creatively the power relations of fossil-fuelled development, potentials for resistance, tendencies of accommodation and embrace and many other aspects of the historical process.

For this workshop we invite contributions about encounters with coal anywhere in the world, up until the Second World War. Building on the recent emergence of literatures examining the development of coal technologies in radically different environments and regions – Asia, the Middle East, South America as well as Britain and Europe – we ask how the histories of those who dug, wrought, fired and laboured for coal and steam can be enriched by the perspectives of historical industrial psychology, environmental history, science and technology studies, history of technology and conceptual history of energy, folklore, religious studies, gender and sexuality in industrial history/history of technology, socioeconomic history, labour history, anthropology, ecocriticism, history of urban environment/pollution, colonial/empire history, rural change and industrialization, energy humanities, maritime history, infrastructural history.

We invite proposed contributions for a hybrid workshop to be held in Cambridge and online on 13-14 December, with 300 word abstracts due on 29 August, accepted contributors informed on 12 September and draft papers (up to 8,000 words) to be circulated by Friday 2 December.

Timeline

Proposed abstracts due: Monday 29 August 2022 (sent by email to Richard Staley <raws1@cam.ac.uk>

Programme circulated: Monday 12 September

Draft papers to be circulated: Friday 2 December

Workshop: Tuesday and Wednesday 13 and 14 December (with a meeting held in Cambridge for those able to attend in person and hybrid participation online for those more distant).

Amr Ahmed, Andreas Malm, Simon Schaffer, Richard Staley

New Post in Contemporary Economic History (University of Glasgow)

Steph

The School of Social and Political Sciences is seeking to appoint a Senior Lecturer or Professor in Contemporary Economic History.

The post holder will conduct research in contemporary economic history as well as deliver teaching in the Economic and Social History subject area of the School of Social and Political Sciences. We welcome applicants with expertise related to business and the global economy, industrialisation and deindustrialisation, or energy and the environment. This could focus on but need not be limited to emerging markets and developing economies. The successful post-holder will be based in the Economic and Social History subject area, which is home to the Centre for Business History in Scotland.

The post holder will undertake research of international excellence and contribute to knowledge exchange activities relative to the discipline, contribute to learning and teaching on agreed programmes and undertake administration and service activities in line with the School/College’s strategic objectives. The post-holder will be expected to seek external research funding and to engage in research-led teaching, and to strengthen links and demonstrate impact with colleagues across and beyond the University and with non-academic bodies as appropriate to their specialism. We value diversity and especially encourage applications from women, disabled and ethnic minority candidates.

This post is on a full time (35 hrs per week), open ended position.

Informal Enquiries should be directed to Dr Rosemary Elliot, rosemary.elliot@glasgow.ac.uk

Visit our website for further information on The University of Glasgow, School of Social & Political Sciences https://www.gla.ac.uk/schools/socialpolitical/

Apply online at:https://my.corehr.com/pls/uogrecruit/erq_jobspec_version_4.jobspec?p_id=086789

Closing Date: 28 June 2022

It is the University of Glasgow’s mission to foster an inclusive climate, which ensures equality in our working, learning, research and teaching environment.

We strongly endorse the principles of Athena SWAN, including a supportive and flexible working environment, with commitment from all levels of the organisation in promoting gender equity.

The University of Glasgow, charity number SC004401.

History of European Research Society Conference

Steph

The History of European Research Society (HEIRS) will hold its 18th annual conference under the title “A means to what end: the interrelation between visions of Europe and economic policies.” The conference will take place from 31st May to 1st June 2022 at the University of Glasgow. 

The conference allows PhD candidates and early career researchers to present and discuss their work. 

We are also interested in the perspective of business actors. Therefore, we think that many members of the BHC could be interested in the conference

Please find a pdf to our CfP by clicking on this link to our website. 

Marvin Schnippering 

(Co-organisers) 

PhD Researcher in Economic and Social History
School of Political and Social Science, University of Glasgow

CFP: Businesses, banks and the making of Europe’s Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), 1957-1992

Steph

The aim of this conference is to explore the contribution of businesses and banks to the debates about Europe’s Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) from the 1960s to the 1990s. 
While there is an increasing number of studies on business and European integration, the role and involvement of businesses in the making of EMU remain little researched. Business history mostly focuses on business attitudes to European integration in general, as well as businesses’ reaction to European integration and the adaptation of corporate strategies. Most studies look at the history of the Single Market neglecting economic and monetary coordination.
This conference overcomes the division for business and financial history by including banks in the umbrella term of ‘business’. In case of the EMU, banks relevance was critical. First, they had an obvious interest in monetary affairs in the EEC/EU for the conduct of their business activities. Second, policymakers considered that EMU necessitated a high degree of financial integration for a proper functioning, which implied an increase in the cross-border activities of banks and other financial services. Third, banks were, like other companies in the EEC/EU, very active in trying to influence the Commission and European policymakers in order to shape European integration to their perceived interests.
The conference thus proposes to further connect business and financial history with European integration history. Were businesses and banks supportive, indifferent to, or against EMU, and why? Did they share the same attitudes, concerns, and objectives? What was their actual contribution to policy discussions, and did they participate through lobbying broadly speaking, or the co-production of norms? How did they try to coordinate their views to increase their influence? Did they push for proposals that were alternative to those being designed among governments? And what challenges does the influence of businesses and banks raise in terms of democratic legitimacy? Answers to these questions are likely to reveal just how diverse, complex, and multi-faceted the debates were around economic and monetary integration in Europe. They equally open new lines of economic historical research on the power of non-state actors to shape intergovernmental macro-economic coordination. 

We are particularly interested in contributions looking at:

  • case studies on individual businesses and banks, 
  • broader approaches addressing one country, 
  • studies on business and banking associations and groupings,
  • analyses focusing on specific sub-sectors of business (industry, services, small and medium-sized enterprises, multinationals) and banking (cooperative banks, investment banks, commercial banks, small- or medium-sized banks), or other financial institutions (insurance and stock exchanges, for instance) 
  • comparative approaches across states and sectors
  • the *absence* of specific reflections on EMU (or the misperception, misconception of what EMU entails),
  • dialogue of businesses and banks with the EEC institutions and national governments,
  • contextualisation of EMU in business perceptions of European integration: to what extent was EMU on the agenda, and if not, what topics were? Where did EMU fit in business and banks perceptions of the European project?
  • The view of business and banks elsewhere in the world (criticism against ‘Fortress Europe’)

The conference focuses on a period running from the creation of the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1957 until the decision to create an EMU in 1991 with the Treaty of Maastricht in 1991. Contributions can focus on shorter, more specific periods, in particular the 1980s, or span this entire time frame.

The conference will take place on 25-26 April 2022. We hope to hold it in person in Glasgow, but if the coronavirus-related restrictions are too onerous for the participants, we will revert to a hybrid format.

Eligibility and how to apply:

PhD students, early career researchers, and confirmed researchers are invited to submit proposals. We encourage submissions on any aspect of business.

Applicants should submit an abstract of no more than 500 words outlining their proposal, and a short CV by 15 December 2021 to EURECON Project Administrator Diana Mardare, rso-admin-eurecon@glasgow.ac.uk, mentioning ‘Business and EMU Conference’ in the headline. Selected applicants will be informed by early January 2022.

Please note that should your institution be unable to do so, there are limited funds available to support your accommodation and travel expenses. 

For further information please contact the EURECON Project’s administrator Diana Mardare: rso-admin-eurecon@glasgow.ac.uk. 

Scientific committee:

Dr Alexis Drach (University of Paris VIII)
Dr Aleksandra Komornicka (University of Glasgow)
Professor Emmanuel Mourlon-Druol (University of Glasgow)
Professor Neil Rollings (University of Glasgow)

Organisation:

The conference is initiated by the ERC-funded research project EURECON: The Making of a Lopsided Union: Economic Integration in the European Economic Community, 1957-1992 led by Professor Emmanuel Mourlon-Druol (grant agreement No 716849).

Cambridge-LSE workshop on African Economic History 29-30 June 2021

Steph
The third annual Cambridge-LSE Workshop on African economic history will take place on Zoom from 29-30 June 2021. In this exceptional year, this workshop will be one of a series of smaller meetings replacing the annual meeting of the African Economic History Network, which has been postponed.

We are inviting submissions in all fields of African economic history, particularly from advanced PhD students and early career scholars. The workshop will be held over two half-days and the programme will focus on short presentation of pre-circulated papers.

Please submit a CV and extended abstract of 300-500 words to l.a.gardner@lse.ac.uk by 4 June, 2021.

Best wishes,
Leigh Gardner, on behalf of the African Economic History Network