Department News

Knowles Review of Economic History

We are pleased to announce the first edition of the Knowles Review of Economic History.

The journal is committed to publishing the best work produced by undergraduate and postgraduate students across the LSE student body. All articles are peer-reviewed and published in conjunction with the Houghton Street Press.

View the journal here: Knowles Review of Economic History

Dr Anne Ruderman Named 2020 ACLS Fellow

Congratulations to Dr Anne Ruderman, who has just been awarded a fellowship by the American Council of Learned Societies for 2020-2021. The fellowship will support her book project, 'Supplying the Slave Trade', which is under contract with Yale University Press.

Read more about Dr Ruderman’s project here: ACLS Fellowship 2020

April 2020

Eyam Revisited: Lessons from a plague village

1843 magazine, April 2020

Professor Patrick Wallis returns to the tiny village of Eyam, which underwent a lengthy quarantine during the Great Plague of 1665, and lost over three-quarters of its population. The village has become an emblem of heroic individual sacrifice for the greater good, despite the lack of historical evidence about how the quarantine came into being or was enforced. In a time of global epidemic and social distancing, Patrick unpicks fact from fiction to find out how Eyam can still speak to our times.

Read the article here: Eyam Revisited

April 2020

2019 Royal Economic Society Prize awarded to Jane Humphries and Jacob Weisdorf

The prize was awarded for their article ‘Unreal Wages? Real Income and Economic Growth in England, 1260-1850,’ which argues that modern economic growth in the late 16th Century, some 200 years earlier than typically thought.

The RES's full media briefing on the prize can be found here: RES Media Briefing

April 2020

Book Cover of Absent Management in Banking by Christian Dinesen

Absent Management in Banking, how banks fail and cause financial crisis

Christian Dinesen (Palgrave, 2020)

Christian Dinesen has drawn on his professional experience in banking and academic background as an Economic History alum, for his book on the lack of management in banking. Dinesen's analysis ranges from the Medici of the fifteenth century to the global banking corporations of the twentieth. Having examined the role lack of management played in the financial crises of the 21st century. He concludes with a warning that the industry's failure to learn from past crises makes further crises inevitable.

Read an interview with Dinesen on the LSE website here: Why a lack of management in banking makes another financial crisis 'almost inevitable'

February 2020

Apprenticeship in Early Modern Europe_Cover

New publication: Apprenticeship in Early Modern Europe

Editors: Maarten Prak, Patrick Wallis

The first comparative and comprehensive account of occupational training before the Industrial Revolution. The essays outline the features of this European-wide system of skills education, and provide essential insights into a key institution of economic and social history.

More information here: Apprenticeship In Early Modern Europe

November 2019

Digital Collaboration with Smithsonian on African Currency Objects

Dr Leigh Gardner, together with Dr.Ellen Feingold of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, have collaborated on the creation of an open-access digital collection of the 880 West African currency objects in the National Numismatic Collection, funded by LSE’s Knowledge Exchange and Impact Fund. A curated sample of these can be found on Learning Lab, the Smithsonian’s online education platform . Further curated collections can be tailored for use in classrooms.

Its aim is to provide a template for cooperation between museums and universities in using the digitization of museum collections to help disseminate research to wider audiences.

Recent article: Dr Rebecca Simson

Ethnic (in)equality in the public services of Kenya and Uganda

Read Dr Simson's article on the African Affairs website.

New blog post: ''Wages in the Middle Ages'

On the EHS blog Dr Jordan Claridge writes about the critical importance of an accurate picture of medieval wages for conceptions of historic economic development, and how his new method connecting precise cash and ‘in kind’ data will allow more precise calculations to be made.

Read Dr Claridge's article on the EHS blog. Wages in the Middle Ages

The Economic History Department, LSE hosted a screening of 'The Enemy Within', a short documentary exploring the effects and legacy of the 1980s Miners Strike on one of the lesser-known mining communities in Kent. The film was made by sixth formers from Oakwood Park Grammar School in collaboration with The Independent Film Trust and LSE. The students interviewed former miners and other key protagonists at the time, and also featured Dudley Baines, who set the strike in its economic and historical context.

23 November 2018

How do stories help us understand the world?
LSE IQ podcast Episode 18

'Even in chemistry you have narratives [...] a beginning a middle and an end.' Professor Mary Morgan talks about the place of stories in science in this month's LSE IQ podcast.

Listen to the episode here: LSE IQ podcast Ep 18

21 November 2018

Article: Janet Hunter, Kota Ogasawara

Price shocks in regional markets: Japan’s Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923

Read the article in the Economic History Review.

November 2018

Royal African Company Networks

Dr Anne Ruderman launched her project website on Royal African Company Networks at the LSE Research Showcase, Tuesday 13 November. Visitors were able to view a range of maps and graphics and learn about the progress of the project.

The event was LSE’s first ever research showcase for the School community, featuring film and photography, hands-on activities and games from a wide range of projects. Staff and students were able to engage directly with the researchers and discover the transformative aspects of the social sciences.

Find out more about Dr Ruderman's research on the project website here: Royal African Company Networks

Read more about the event: LSE Research Showcase

13 November 2018

Global Economic History

Global Economic History
Editors: Tirthankar Roy, Giorgio Riello
Bloomsbury Academic, 2018

This new selection of essays by leading academics focuses on the questions, debates, methodologies and issues addressed by the growing field of global economic history.

Chapters are organized both thematically and geographically, covering topics from 'The Great Divergence', the New World and the rise of global silver economy. Contributors include Kenneth Pomeranz, John McNeill, and Prasannan Parthasarathi, plus authors from or associated with our own department, Patrick O'Brien, including Patrick O'Brien, Alejandra Irigoin, Debin Ma, and Gareth Austin.

Find out more on the Bloomsbury page: Global Economic History

November 2018

Dr Debin Ma

Dr Debin Ma guest edits a special edition of Frontier of Economics in China (Sept. 2018, Volume 13 Issue 3) focusing on Chinese Economic History. Subjects range from urban and rural economies to the monetary system and financial institutions in China, with particular focus on the primary importance of institutions and ideology, the employment of comparative perspectives and the systematic application of quantitative analyses based on new archives and data.

You can get free online access to the journal for a limited period only) at: http://journal.hep.com.cn/fec/EN/article/showSpecialIssues.do

October 2018

Dr Chris Minns

'Do the Migrations of the Past have Lessons for Today?'
Professor Chris Minns Inaugural Lecture

6.30-8pm, 22 October 2018, Wolfson Theatre LSE

Migration has always been part of the human experience. But can the study of past population movements help us to understand present-day markets and societies? This lecture draws on a range of historical evidence to explore the possibilities.

Find out more about Chris's lecture on the LSE Events page.

September 2018

'Eyam' - The Globe Theatre draws on departmental expertise

Professor Patrick Wallis was consulted by theatre director Adele Thomas in preparation for a new play 'Eyam' staged at the Globe Theatre in September and October. Professor Wallis wrote a 2006 paper on the 1666 outbreak of plague in the small Derbyshire village, unpicking the many ways in which it has been remade over the last four centuries.

You can read Professor Wallis's paper here: Dreadful Heritage: Interpreting Epidemic Disease at Eyam, 1666–2000

October 2018

JEH-crop3

New article: David Chilosi, Max Schulze, Oliver Volckart

Benefits of Empire? Capital Market Integration North and South of the Alps, 1350–1800

Read the article on the Journal of Economic History website.

ARuderman2018

Welcome to Dr Anne Ruderman, Assistant Professor in Economic History

Dr Ruderman joins our department from Harvard, where she completed her PhD. She is an economic historian of Early Modern Europe and the Atlantic World with a particular focus on the transatlantic slave trade. Her current book project, Supplying the Slave Trade, looks at how European slave-ship outfitters tried to figure out African consumer demand for their products and re-exports in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Jordan_Claridge

Welcome to new Assistant Professor, Dr Jordan Claridge

Dr Claridge joined the department in September 2018 as Assistant Professor after two years as Teaching Fellow. His research focuses on how individuals, societies, markets and industries adjusted to changing economic and social circumstances in the Middle Ages.

September 2018

JEH-crop3

New article: Patrick Wallis, Justin Colson, David Chilosi
Structural Change and Economic Growth in the British Economy before the Industrial Revolution, 1500–1800

Read the article in the Journal of Economic History.

August 2018

NCummins

The decline of northern England'
Voxeu podcast featuring Dr Neil Cummins, Dept of Economic History, LSE

Neil talks with Tim Phillips about how the lag between the north of England and Wales and the south in output per person, educational attainment, and even life expectancy can be explained entirely by a 200-year 'Big Sort - the migration south of talented people, replaced by less-able southerners who move north. https://bit.ly/2LjEXUQ

24 August 2018

Article: Eric B Schneider, Kota Ogasawara

Disease and child growth in industrialising Japan: Critical windows and the growth pattern, 1917–39

Read the article in Explorations in Economic History

July 2018

Article: Leigh Gardner,Alex Klein,Mikolaj Malinowski, Tamas Vonyo

EHDR and the economic history of Eastern Europe

Read the article in the journal Economic History of Developing Regions

July 2018

LSE_IQ_120

Dr Natacha Postel-Vinay features on LSE IQ Podcast 'Are cryptocurrencies the future of money.'

This episode of the LSE IQ podcast examines whether cryptocurrencies are the future of money, a speculative bubble that will burst, or something else. Dr Postel-Vinay, who research expertise includes monetary and banking phenomena in times of financial crisis and downturn, discusses how the bitcoin bubble compares to bubbles in the past.

6 June 2018

New publication: Dr Christopher Kissane
Food, Religion and Communities in Early Modern Europe
Bloombury June 2018

Visiting Fellow Dr Christopher Kissane examines the relationship between food and religion in early modern Europe using case studies in Castile, Zurich and Shetland to explore what food reveals about the wider social and cultural history of early modern communities undergoing religious upheaval.

June 2018

'Working in the Past '

Half-day workshop hosted by the Economic History Department, London School of Economics, Thursday 28 June 2018

One of the biggest remaining blank spaces in economic history is the amount and intensity of work in the early modern period. How much did people work in a year? How did these patterns differ between members of a household? How did this change over time, and how can all of these questions help inform our standard of living estimates?

This workshop brings together cutting edge work, including in-depth analyses of individual markets and some of the first quantitative attempts to measure the working year, in an effort to address these questions and to deepen our understanding of life and living in the past. Speakers include Ben Schneider (Oxford), Kathryn Gary (Lund) and Jordan Claridge and Patrick Wallis from our own department.

For further information, please contact Cristina Victoria Radu (cvr@sam.sdu.dk).

Book: Professor Tirthankar Roy
A Business History of India: Enterprise and the Emergence of Capitalism from 1700

In recent decades, private investment has led to an economic resurgence in India. But this is not the first time the region has witnessed impressive business growth. There have been many similar stories over the past 300 years. Through detailed case studies of firms, entrepreneurs, and business commodities, this book bridges the approaches of business and economic history, illustrating the development of a distinctive regional capitalism.

For more details of Professor Roy's book follow this link to the publisher's page.[URL]

Professor Roy's book will be launched on Thursday, 31 May at an event hosted by LSE South Asia Centre. Full details of the event can be found here via this link. [URL]

2018 EH204 Golden Bottle Awards Prize Winners!

Congratulations to this year's winners for the best essay written by a student on the course EH204: From the Middle Ages to Modernity:

Winner: Ana Struillou for her essay on the topic ‘England and France in the 100-years war’.

Runners up: Hieu Phan and Giovanni Rosso, who both wrote on ‘Public authorities and banks/stock exchanges’.

The prize winners received congratulations from EH204 course convenor Professor Oliver Volckart and class teachers Thea Don-Siemion and Ivan Luzardo Lima at a small ceremony on 25 May.

The prize is sponsored by Hoare's Bank.

Economic History student in finals of national 'Posters in Parliament' competition

Economic History student Mayowa Igbalajobi was one of the two LSE students selected to represent the School at this year's Posters in Parliament competition. This year work was displayed at Portcullis House.

Each participating UK university nominates up to two participants to exhibit their undergraduate research in the exhibition.The work displayed on the poster must be conducted in the final year of an undergraduate programme, either from current final-year students or recent (2017) graduates.