It seems unbelievable that another year has passed, and the campus is abuzz with preparations for the new School year.
At School level, the big news is that after a successful tenure, Baroness Minouche Shafik has now left and her replacement has been named as Professor Larry Kramer. Although he will not formally begin his role until April next year, we are very excited to have an historian at the helm! You can read the LSE Press Release here.
Other good news for the School is the UK’s recently announced association with Horizon Europe, a significant development that signals a remarkable milestone in the pursuit of research excellence, collaboration and innovation. And, according to the Guardian University Guide, LSE is ranked as the best university in London. Although Economic History is not listed as an independent subject our BScs in Economic History, Economic History and Geography, and Economics and Economic History were half of the programmes that gave the School an overall ranking of 6th in History.
One thing that really stood out last year was the benefit our students took from the chance to talk with alumni about how to make the transition to the world of work, and to translate the skills of their degrees into jobs. We are really grateful that many of you helped out and met with students. We will be expanding this mentoring programme to include undergraduates this year, so please look out for a message from Oli Harrison about this if you are interested in being involved. You can also read about Christian Dinesen and Michael Martins' experience as a mentor here.
Within the Department we are delighted to see a wide array of new research initiatives: a team of faculty, Leigh Gardner, Tirthankar Roy, and Mohamed Saleh were awarded a large grant to work with the Historical Association on a teaching colonial economic history within the national curriculum and A Level curriculum – this is currently still in the planning stages, but we will update you with more information once the project is underway. Eric Schneider and Neil Cummins are Co-Directors of a new research group within the Department: Historical Economic Demography and you can read more about the aims and objectives here.
As is usual, we have a full programme of events planned for Autumn Term (formally Michaelmas Term) – these include Eric Schneider’s Inaugural Lecture, Mary Morgan’s lecture to mark her Presidency of the Royal Economic Society, and public discussions and lectures linked to recent books, including one on Slavery and the Industrial Revolution by Maxine Berg & Pat Hudson, and Martin Daunton’s major new study of the long twentieth century The Economic Government of the World. For more information, take a look at our Events Page. And please do come and join us at one of the events if you are in London.
At the recent European Historical Economics Society conference in Vienna, Jason Lennard and Safya Morshed were awarded prestigious prizes for their research, and Nick Fitzhenry (a current PhD student) won the LSE Class Teacher Award for 2023. A week later, the main US economic history society, the EHA, awarded Leigh Gardner the Lindert-Williamson Prize for the best book on global economic history for her history of Liberia. You can read more here.
It certainly feels like 2023-24 is going to be a good year for the Department, and I hope to see some of you at one (or more!) of our events. Please do stay in touch – we love to hear from our alumni!
Patrick Wallis