The Fondazione 1563 per l’Arte e la Cultura (hereinafter “Fondazione 1563”) welcomes applications for the Postgraduate Summer School ‘Needs, Justice, and the Wealth of Nations: The Moral and Material Foundations of Political Economy in the European World (1500-1800)’, that will be held on 17-19 September 2026 in Turin, Italy.
The emergence of political economy in early modern Europe was not the product of a single intellectual breakthrough, but of sustained attempts to reconcile material expansion with moral, legal, and political constraints. From the management of scarcity and subsistence to the governance of trade, empire, and population, early modern thinkers confronted a central question: how should wealth be created, distributed, and justified within society?
This Summer school explores the debates and policies that gave rise to political economy as a field of inquiry. Rather than treating it as a precursor to modern economics, participants will examine political economy as a historically situated set of practices and arguments, embedded in specific institutional, imperial, and ecological contexts. These took related yet disparate forms, ranging from the much-maligned shorthand of “mercantilism” to self-conscious traditions such as Cameralism, Colbertism, Physiocracy, and economia civile.
Bringing together approaches from intellectual history, economic history, and the history of science, the Summer School will focus on three interconnected axes:
1. Subsistence, Sociability, and the Problem of Order
2. Production, Power, and the Uneven Wealth of Nations
3. Rights, Justice, and the Legitimacy of Economic Life
The Summer School programme includes lectures by: Lasse Andersen (Institute for Intellectual History, University of St. Andrews, UK), Felicia Gottmann (Northumbria University, UK), Sophus Reinert (Harvard Business School, US), Pernille Røge (University of Pittsburgh, US), and John Shovlin (New York University, US).
The summer school is open to doctoral students and early-career researchers working on the history of political economy and related fields. The default language will be English.
Applications should be submitted ultimately by the extended deadline of 22 June 2026, 10:00 PM CET. Details on how to submit an application and the application link can be found in the full call via the button below.
