The Advisory Board was established to assist the department in maintaining strong links with students, alumni, parents and friends of LSE Economic History. The board works to support the department in a range of areas including alumni and friends outreach, student mentoring and internships, departmental events and new initiatives, and resource development.
I am happy to report that the board has been very active in all of these areas. Focusing on the experience of our students, the board piloted and helped to launch the department’s mentoring programme where students are paired with alumni with relevant interests and work together in person or remotely. This programme has been very well received and has become an annual event benefitting both students and mentors alike. Led by Breht Feigh, the board has also been supportive of the department’s efforts to offer internships to students in the department. These internships have provided students with the opportunity to work directly with faculty on research initiatives each year. This past year, 30 students undertook an internship with a member of our faculty, and you can read about the projects here. The board again supported the department’s investment competition, where students work in teams to prepare and present a recommendation for an investment using skills developed in studying economic history. This past November, students presented to a panel of seasoned financial professionals (including board member Steve Mobbs), with the winning team spending a day meeting with analysts across a range of investment strategies at Tikehau Capital, a leading asset management and investment firm. This year’s participation was up almost 50% over prior years.
With respect to alumni and friends engagement, the board has hosted a series of lectures and panel discussions involving faculty, external speakers and members of the board covering a range of topics in economic and financial history. These events have been well attended and we are currently planning new ones. As always, we hope to use these events to attract students, alumni and friends to the work of the department. Led by Sydnie Reynolds, the board also introduced a book group programme where faculty, alumni and friends joined to discuss the work of one of our faculty members. We have conducted two of these sessions to date and would welcome input from alumni for future topics. Special thanks to faculty members Leigh Gardner and Tirthankar Roy for presenting their work and engaging in spirited discussions.
Another important aspect of the board’s work is in raising funds to support the needs of the department. We have focused our efforts to date on providing studentships for promising candidates in our PhD programme. To date we have funded two studentships and we look forward to accelerating our fundraising efforts in 2025 and beyond. Our goal is to widen the participation of our fundraising and engage with more alumni and friends to support the department.
One measure of the success of the board is the interest we have had from other departments at LSE. Patrick Wallis and I recently presented to the heads of departments across the school as several other departments wished to learn from our approach.
If you would like to find out more about the Advisory Board and its activities, please feel free to contact me (p.t.cirenza@lse.ac.uk) or Professor Max Schulze (m.s.schulze@lse.ac.uk). We would be delighted to speak with you.