Francesca Carnevali (15 February 1964 - 18 May 2013)
It is with deep regret and great sadness that we announce the death of Dr Francesca Carnevali. Francesca died peacefully after a long illness, at home in Italy, on the morning of Saturday, 18 May.
Having gained her BA summa cum laude at the Universita degli Studi di Milano and her MSc and PhD at the London School of Economics, Francesca went on to become a senior lecturer in Economic History at the University of Birmingham. She held research grants from the ESRC, had visiting appointments at Brown and Harvard Universities and was awarded the Alfred Chandler International Scholar Fellowship by the Harvard Business School.
Francesca published to wide acclaim on a diverse range of subjects, from social capital to monetary policy. In addition to a large number of articles and book chapters, she produced three books: Uno sviluppo fra politica e strategia: Ente Nazionale Idrocarburi, 1953-1985 (1992); Europe's Advantage: Banks and Small Firms in Britain, France, Germany and Italy since 1918 (2005); and Luxury for the Masses: Jewellery, Creativity and Entrepreneurship in America and Britain, 1870-1914 (2012). Much of her teaching, like her research, was internationally comparative, and her interests linked many themes, including gender, the middle class, firms and industrial districts. She contributed a great deal to her broad agenda of 'understanding how the forces of capitalism have shaped the lives of people and changed the structures of societies'.
Francesca was a wonderfully unselfish and hugely active member of the Economic History Society. She acted as local organiser of the 2002 annual conference at the University of Birmingham and, more recently, chaired the Women's Committee, organising a range of annual Women's Committee Workshops and Annual Conference sessions. She served for many years on both the Executive Committee and Council and was, until shortly before her death, Reviews Editor of the Economic History Review. She was also very active in the Association of Business Historians and played major roles in the journals Enterprise and Society and Contemporary British History. Throughout these activities, as in her professional life generally, Francesca was a very friendly, intellectually lively, public-spirited colleague who contributed a great deal to the general spirit as well as the particular activities of the economic and social history profession.
She is survived by her beloved husband, Dr Paolo di Martino, senior lecturer in international business history at the University of Birmingham, and by her mother Ann, her brother Massimo and two nephews. Francesca will be sorely missed by her friends and colleagues in the Economic History Society.
There will be a commemoration of Francesca at the Society's conference next March at the University of Warwick.
If you would like to donate to Cancer Research UK in memory of Francesca, you may do so here:
Rick Trainor
President, Economic History Society
