Research School for Economic and Social History

Category: News

  • Online Summer School ‘Exploring Open Large-Scale Historical Demographic Databases’

    Online Summer School ‘Exploring Open Large-Scale Historical Demographic Databases’

    The Italian Society of Historical Demography (Società Italiana di Demografia Storica; SIDeS) organises an online summer school on ‘Exploring Open Large-Scale Historical Demographic Databases’. The sessions are scheduled for 8 September, 15 September, 22 September, 29 September, 6 October 2023. All sessions will be held online from 3 pm until 5 pm (UTC+2).

    About the summer school

    This online summer school is aimed at scholars (junior and senior), doctoral students and anyone with research interests in the field of historical demography. This year’s edition will focus on sources that have been (or are in the process of being) made into large-scale databases that are or will be publicly available for research. At the end of the course, participants will understand the challenges of creating large-scale databases using diverse types of sources that are suitable for research, understand their potential for allowing new research topics to be studied and will have acquired some preliminary information on how to work with them. The course will feature experts (among whom several Posthumus fellows) discussing several projects that illuminate different contexts, needs, challenges and opportunities using European sources, and a final session focusing on the Italian case.

    How to participate

    To enroll, participants must be a member of the Italian Society of Historical Demography. Those not yet member of SIDeS can simultaneously apply to join our society and attend the summer course. Registration requests must be received by 5 September 2023. For more information, contact the SIDeS secretary, Gabriele Ruiu.

    DOWNLOAD PROGRAM (PDF)
     
    WEBSITE SIDES

  • Masterclass with Thomas Safley: ‘Actors and institutions in the pre-Modern Economy’

    Masterclass with Thomas Safley: ‘Actors and institutions in the pre-Modern Economy’

    VUB research group HOST (Historical Research into Urban Transformation Processes) in collaboration with the N.W. Posthumus Institute is hosting the masterclass ‘Actors and institutions in the pre-Modern Economy’ with Professor Thomas Safley on 2 October 2023.

    About the speaker

    Thomas Max Safley is Professor of Early Modern European History (Emeritus) at the University of Pennsylvania. He specialises in the economic and social history of early modern Europe between 1450 and 1750, on which he has published extensively. His publications include Matheus Miller’s Memoirs: A Merchant’s Life in the Seventeenth Century (Palgrave Macmillan, 2000) and Family Firms and Merchant Capitalism in Early Modern Europe: The Business, Bankruptcy and Resilience of the Hoechstetters of Augsburg (Taylor & Francis, 2019).

    About the Masterclass

    The masterclass ‘Actors and Institutions in the Pre-Modern Economy’ offers PhD candidates and early career researchers the opportunity to present and discuss their work with an expert in the field. It focusses on the actors (specifically merchants and families) and institutions (the state/authorities and households) that shaped the pre-modern economy of the Low Countries. During the masterclass a maximum of 6 participants will offer 10-minute presentations based on a pre-submitted project outline such as a paper/chapter abstract. Afterwards, Professor Safley and the participants will be able to provide detailed feedback on the presentation/proposal and discuss the topic. The goal is to help the researcher as well as the other participants in shaping/developing an argument or theory.

    How to participate

    Researchers working on Actors and Institutions in the Pre-Modern Economy are invited to send an abstract (c. 300 words) with a brief biographical note to both HOST and organiser Yannis Skalli Housseini by 1 September 2023. All candidates will be notified of the outcome by 7 September.

    DOWNLOAD CALL (PDF)

  • In Memoriam: Professor Peter Hertner (1942-2023)

    In Memoriam: Professor Peter Hertner (1942-2023)

    Recently, we were informed that Professor Peter Hertner, member of the ESTER network, passed away on 26 April 2023.

    Born in 1942 in Ulm, Southern Germany, he studied in Heidelberg, Besançon, Basel, Strasbourg, Paris, and Marburg where he was awarded his diploma in Economics in 1968, and he also obtained his PhD in 1971, with a dissertation on the economic and social history of Strasbourg, 1650-1715.

    He was an Assistant Professor at the Department of Social and Economic History in Marburg, from 1970 until 1977. From 1977 until 1981 he was a Junior Professor (Akademischer Rat) at the Institut für Geschichte der Technischen Hochschule in Darmstadt. He joined the European University Institute in 1981, first as a Research Assistant in the HEC Department until 1986, and subsequently as a full Professor until 1988, after he received his habilitation in Darmstadt in 1986, with a thesis on the German capital export to Italy and the development of the Italian economy, 1861-1894. Between 1981 and 1989 Hertner held various teaching positions in Italy, at the Università L’Orientale, Naples, the universities of Ancona and Genoa, and at the Bocconi Business School in Milan. He was named Director of the EUI library in 1988 until 1995 and remained as an external Professor in the EUI History Department.

    In April 1995, he was appointed Professor of Economic and Social History at the Martin-Luther-Universität in Halle-Wittenberg. He was a member of the editorial board and co-editor of Italian economic history journals, a member of the Scientific Board of the German Historical Institute in Rome, of the Comité pour l’histoire de l’electricité in Paris, of the Gesellschaft für Unternehmensgeschichte and of the European Association for Banking and Financial History (EABH) both in Frankfurt and Main.

    On behalf of the ESTER network, the staff of the N.W. Posthumus Institute expresses its condolences to Professor Peter Hertner’s family, his colleagues and all that were close to him.

    This in memoriam is based on the extended obituary by Serge Noiret, Visiting Fellow at the EUI History Department.

    OBITUARY BY S. NOIRET (EUI)

  • Tweets not showing due to changes Twitter

    Tweets not showing due to changes Twitter

    As you may have noticed, the Twitter feed on our homepage shows the message ‘Nothing to see here – yet’. It appears that recent changes in Twitters management and policy are the cause of this; many other websites experience the same problem.

    Want to keep updated? Then follow us directly via our Twitter account at https://twitter.com/nwp_esh. Logging in may be required as a result of Twitter’s new policy.


    TO OUR TWITTER PAGE

  • NEW: New version of PhD brochure out now!

    NEW: New version of PhD brochure out now!

    The staff of the N.W. Posthumus Institute is happy to inform you that an updated and revised version of the PhD Training Programme oF the N.W. Posthumus Institute has just been released. In this brochure, (prospective) PhD participants will find all relevant info on the current Posthumus PhD Training Programme.

    Feel free to download the brochure and/or to distribute the link, to be found under the button below. If you want some printed copies to distribute, please contact the Posthumus secretariat by e-mail, stating your address and desired number of copies.

    DOWNLOAD PHD BROCHURE (PDF)

  • Datini-ESTER Advanced Seminar 2024: ‘Social and Geographical Mobility

    Datini-ESTER Advanced Seminar 2024: ‘Social and Geographical Mobility

    Fondazione Istituto Internazionale di Storia Economica “F. Datini” and the European School for Training in Economic and Social Historical Research (ESTER) will organise their seventh jointly-organized Datini-ESTER Advanced Seminar for economic and social historians on 12-18 May 2024, in Prato (Italy) on the theme of ‘Social and Geographical Mobility’

    The organisers

    ESTER, established in 1991, is an international postgraduate network incorporating more than 60 European Universities. ESTER organises research training in the form of both the annual Research Design Course for starting PhD-students and a series of Advanced Seminars on special themes within economic and social history.

    “F. Datini” International Institute of Economic History was founded in 1967 by Federigo Melis and Fernand Braudel. The aim of the Institute is the study of pre-industrial economic history (thirteenth-eighteenth centuries) and the creation on the topic of a space for historical culture, making comparison between different methodologies and schools of research easier and supporting young scholars during their formative years.

    Theme

    The topic of the seminar is closely related to the theme of the congress organized yearly by the “F. Datini” International Institute of Economic History, which in 2024 is devoted to ‘Social Mobility in pre-industrial societies: tendencies, causes and effects (13th-18th centuries)’. The 2024 Datini-Ester seminar will deal with Social and Geographical Mobility.

    More info

    Deadline for submitting abstracts for the 2024 edition closed on 15 October 2023. If accepted for participation, the final paper will be due on 15 March 2024. For info on the seminar in general, you may contact Dr Jaco Zuijderduijn (Lund University).

    DOWNLOAD FULL CALL (PDF)

  • NEW: PhD Cohort pages launched on Posthumus website

    NEW: PhD Cohort pages launched on Posthumus website

    We are happy to announce the launch of the PhD cohort pages on our website.

    On these pages, you will find the PhDs currently following the PhD Training Programme of the N.W. Posthumus Institute. Thinking about joining this programme? Find all info about the programme here.

    You will find the cohort pages here:

    PhDs Cohort 2020

    PhDs Cohort 2021

    PhDs Cohort 2022

  • New publication by Posthumus members Elisabeth Heijmans and Sophie Rose

    New publication by Posthumus members Elisabeth Heijmans and Sophie Rose

    Posthumus members Elisabeth Heijmans and co-editor Sophie Rose are the editors of Diversity and Empires Negotiating Plurality in European Imperial Projects from Early Modernity, published on 2 June 2023 with Routledge as an open-access book.

    Examining diversity as a fundamental reality of empire, this book explores European colonial empires, both terrestrial and maritime, to show how they addressed the questions of how to manage diversity. These questions range from the local to the supra-regional, and from the management of people to that of political and judicial systems. Taking an intersectional approach incorporating categories such as race, religion, subjecthood, and social and legal status, the contributions of the volume show how old and new modes of creating social difference took shape in an increasingly globalized early modern world, and what contemporary legacies these ‘diversity formations’ left behind. This volume shows diversity and imperial projects to be both contentious and mutually constitutive: on the one hand, the conditions of empire created divisions between people through official categorizations (such as racial classifications and designations of subjecthood) and through discriminately applied extractive policies, from taxation to slavery. On the other hand, imperial subjects, communities, and polities within and adjacent to the empire asserted themselves through a diverse range of affiliations and identities that challenged any notion of a unilateral, universal imperial authority.

    This book highlights the multidimensionality and interconnectedness of diversity in imperial settings and will be useful reading to students and scholars of the history of colonial empires, global history, and race.

    PUBLISHER’S INFO
     
    OPEN ACCESS VERSION

  • CAPASIA lectures on connected histories of capitalism (online / hybrid)

    CAPASIA lectures on connected histories of capitalism (online / hybrid)

    European Research Council project CAPASIA – The Asian Origins of Global Capitalism is organising a series of online/hybrid lectures dedicated to the connected histories of capitalism. The series is jointly organised with the European Research Council project ECOINT – a Twentieth-Century International Economic Thinking, and the Complex History of Globalization and the EUI Conversations on the New Histories of Capitalism Working Group. Download the poster via the button below to view the full program and access links to the respective lectures.

    PROGRAMME AND LECTURE LINKS (PDF)

  • Inaugural Lecture Professor Pepijn Brandon (VU Amsterdam)

    Inaugural Lecture Professor Pepijn Brandon (VU Amsterdam)

    On 26 May 2023 at 15:45 Professor Pepijn Brandon delivered his inaugural lecture as Professor of Global Economic and Social History in the Aula of the VU Amsterdam. The title of the inaugural lecture was: Elements of original accumulation: Dispossession, war, and slavery in the history of capitalism.

    You can find recordings of the inaugural lecture via the button below

    RECORDINGS (YOUTUBE VU AMSTERDAM)