Winter Term 2024 - 2025
Tuesdays 12-1pm
Winter Term Venue: CKK.117 (Cheng Kin Ku)
21 January 2025
- Speaker: Professor Neil Cummins
Abstract:
We document religiosity in England from 1300 to 1850 using the full-text of ~26,000 last will and testaments and 8,000 will extracts.. By extracting from these documents measures of religious expression and sentiment, together with specified wealth bequests for burial, remembrance, parish church and charity, we measure two distinct types of religiosity. “Nominal” religiosity is measured using a composite index for a set of religious declarations in the preamble of the will, such as gratitude towards higher entities. “Real” religiosity is measured from declarations to religious entities in the latter part of the will, together with the value of cash bequests to church, charity and other religious signals. We also code each will to a set of characteristics such as wealth, gender, place, human capital, and occupation. Thus we can chart the correlates of the rise and decline of real and nominal religiosity in high micro-level resolution. Applying regression discontinuity designs across a diverse variety of macro-shocks such as, for example, the Black Death, Henry VIII’s Act of Supremacy in 1534, and across the periods of the enlightenment, and the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions we can assess the determinants of religiosity at the individual level.
18 February 2025
- Speaker: Professor Leigh Gardner
1 April 2025
Tuesdays 12-1pm
19 November 2024 - CANCELLED
- Speaker: Dr Pamfili Antipa