Happy New Year to you all! I hope you had a restful break and are ready to meet the new year head on. It is always hard to get back into the swing of things when the days are so short, but at least we are not revising for exams – our thoughts are with the students as they prepare for them!
In the department, we are looking forwards to the launch of our new Financial History Group. This will be led by Olivier Accominotti, who will have taught many of you, and will involve our expanding group of faculty and research students working on financial history, including Albrecht Ritschl, Natacha Postel-Vinay and Jason Lennard. Financial history has never been more relevant or important, and we hope that the Group will be able to bring economic historians into conversation with practitioners in the City of London and elsewhere. Do look out for its events in the near future.
Several of our PhD students have been awarded their doctorates – please join me in congratulating Mario Cuenda Garcia, Andrea Ramazotti and Juan Jose Rivas Moreno.
We are delighted to announce that, due to a generous donation from Peter Oppenheimer (BSc in Geography, 1985), we are able to offer the Goldman Sachs Gives (UK) – Oppenheimer MSc in Financial History Scholarship to a student domiciled in the UK for the academic year 2024-25. This is a truly generous contribution, and one that will transform a student’s experience here.
Once again, our student Investment Competition was incredibly popular – the standard of entrants was very high, and the competition was hard-fought over an intense weekend of research and presenting! You can read more about the teams and meet the winners here. We are grateful to Gerben Bakker and the panel of alumni and expert judges Anisha Gangwani, Joachim Liese and Steve Mobbs who generously gave up their weekends to participate. Particular thanks go, once again, to Peter Cirenza, who furnishes the first prize – a day shadowing analysts at leading asset management and investment firm, Tikehau Capital.
Please keep Thursday 7th March free as we are pleased to announce that James Feigenbaum, Boston University, will deliver our annual Epstein Lecture: 217 million Census Records: Evidence from Linked Census Data. You can find out more about this, and other events on our webpage here.
In our Profile this edition we catch up with Janet Hunter, Emeritus Saji Professor of Economic History who reflects on the different approaches to teaching Japanese economic history over her long career in the department.
Please do stay in touch – we’d love to know what you’ve been up to.
Patrick Wallis