My research interests focus on the long-run development of new knowledge and its economic impact. My studies go back as far as the seventeenth century and look at the role that education and research institutions played in changing advanced knowledge and disseminating it. I look at institutional change, institutional co-dependency, and path dependence in the development of historical scientific communities as well as the merging of social spheres between the savant and entrepreneur.
As an example, one part of my PhD project is a study of the institutional co-dependency between higher education and institutionalized research in seventeenth century England. The study is based on an estimation of the teacher-student effect in the “new sciences” using individual micro-data on teachers and students.
Dissertation title
- On the Shoulders of Science - Scientific Culture as a Driver of Innovation During the Early Industrial Revolution
Supervisors
- Professor Max Schulze and Dr Jeremiah Dittmar
Curriculum Vitae