Events
If you know of an interesting Economic and Social History related event why not submit it for inclusion into the EHS events calendar.
History of Women in the Americas
Location: Brunel University
Date:
14/03/2012
Description:
The Society for the History of Women in the Americas (SHAW, formerly known as British Historians of Women in the Americas) will hold their fifth annual conference on Wednesday 14th March 2012 at Brunel University, west London.
We welcome papers on any aspect of womens and gender history in North America, South America and the Caribbean. Papers that investigate womens lives from single or multiple vantage points whether topically or geographically are equally welcome. Scholars working on related topics are encouraged to put together a panel of two to four papers. Speakers at the event will have the opportunity to submit their paper for consideration in SHAWs journal, History of Women in the Americas.
A 250 word abstract should be submitted to SHAWs secretary, Dr Rachel Ritchie (rachel.ritchie@brunel.ac.uk), by Tuesday 14th February 2012. Those interested in attending the conference as a delegate are more than welcome as well and should register their interest by this date too. All other enquiries about the conference, SHAW and History of Women in the Americas, should also be directed to Dr Ritchie.
The conference fee is payable upon confirmation of your paper being accepted (or upon confirmation of your place in the case of delegates not giving papers). This will be in mid- to late-February. For non-SHAW members, the conference fee is £55 (waged) and £35 (postgraduate/undergraduate/unwaged); this includes a year's membership of the organisation. For SHAW members, the cost is £28 (waged) and £22 (postgraduate/undergraduate/unwaged).
Website: http://shawsociety.tumblr.com/hwa2012
Contact Email: Rachel.Ritchie@brunel.ac.uk
3rd EABH Workshop for Young Scholars
Location: Bordeaux
Date:
16/03/2012
Description:
Public Policies & the Direction of Financial Flows
Regional Development Transition to Market Economies integration into Processes of Economic Development
The European Association for Banking and Financial History (EABH) e.V.
& GRETHA Research Centre University of Bordeaux
Friday 16 March 2012, Bordeaux
Call for Papers
Many times in history, public authorities have decided to pursue economic policies (mainly development policies) by directing the financial flows of the economy. The central idea of the workshop is to study this phenomenon using a comparative approach. The basic question to be addressed is therefore: Why and how did nonmmarket forces (states, local authorities, international authorities, technical bodies) manage to direct financial flows so as to achieve specific goals, mainly related to economic development? The motivations for adopting such policies need investigation: insufficiency of market forces, weakness of the financial institutions, a special macroeconomic context and the urgency to achieve certain goals are just some of the most common motivations to be studied, while considering the ideology of the policymakers. Communist countries, capitalist countries, middle-of-the-road countries, war economies: all share, to some degree, devices to direct financial flows. The scope of the inquiry will include banks, which extend credit, insurance companies, which invest their reserves, as well as financial markets (via authorisations to issue shares, for example, or even via forced lending to the state) and intergovernmental bodies dedicated to development.
Such management of financial flows may be achieved with a great variety of instruments, from laws to plans to regulations to government decisions to moral suasion. Most often, these devices coexist with other forms of economic regulation (on prices, investments, foreign trade, etc.), yet the focus of the papers should be on financial flows and possibly on how the management of those interacted with other forms of regulation. The following questions are to be considered: How were the authorities in charge of the direction of financial flows organised and how did they collect the relevant information? Did these authorities actually attain their aims (through: assessments of the results of these policies including drawbacks, unwanted effects, interferences with other policies? Which bodies produced the documents and the statistics that cover the subject? Why were they preserved or destroyed?
How to identify and follow the policies concerning the direction of financial flows?
How to determine the mindset and portfolio of skills of the people who devised and managed them?
The transition of command economies to market economies in Eastern and Central Europe, in the Black Sea area or in Central Asia is part of this subject matter: How did the Transition Period since the fall of the Berlin Wall favour such trends to orient financial and capital flows towards this area? How did the European Community set up and oversee such flows? (Papers considering the role played by the Bank of Economic and Regional Development (BERD) or by the Black Sea Trade & Development Bank (BSTDB), for instance, would be very much appreciated.) How did small and medium sized enterprises benefit from such earmarked financial flows? How did modern forms of insurance take shape in these areas? Comparative approaches to the subject matter are encouraged, also by means of co-authorship.
All papers of sufficient quality and relevance to the key issues will be presented at the EABH Conference in Bucharest in July 2012 and will be published in an academic publication under the copyright of EABH.
Please submit papers by Monday 30 January 2012 to: info@bankinghistory.de
www.eabh.info
Website: www.eabh.info
Contact Email: c.hofmann@bankinghistory.de
Workshop on Urban Community and Public Space
Location: Henley Business School, Whiteknights campus, University of Reading
Date:
29/03/2012
Description:
Sowing the Seeds Network and the Centre for Economic History at the University of Reading
A Workshop on Medieval Urban Community and Public Space
Thursday 29 March 2012
Henley Business School, Whiteknights Campus, University of Reading
Registration: Free. Furthermore, travel bursaries are available subject to certain criteria
Duration: 10am-5pm (followed by an optional dinner, which will not be covered as part of the conference budget)
Programme includes:
Round table Urban Community and Public Space (chaired by Dr James Davis, Queens University Belfast)
Key-note talk by Dr Richard Goddard (University of Nottingham)
Papers by post-graduate and early career scholars, including:
Justin Colson, Occupational Clustering in Late Medieval London: Fundamental Changes?
John Lee, Water Supplies in Medieval English Towns
Judith Mills, Step-change or Evolution: Local Government in Nottingham 1400-1600
Arie Van Stenseel, Unravelling the Social Fabric of Urban Communities: Families and Households in England, Italy and the Low Countries, c. 1350-1550
Will Liddle, Merchant Gentrification in Fifteenth-Century King's Lynn, Norfolk
For enquiries about registration, please contact Will Liddle (Queens University Belfast) at w.liddle@qub.ac.uk
For other information, please contact Catherine Casson (Universities of Birmingham and Oxford) at c.m.casson@bham.ac.uk.
We are grateful for financial support from the Economic History Society
Contact Email: c.m.casson@bham.ac.uk
Pisa FRESH meeting
Location: Pisa
Date:
19/04/2012 - 20/04/2012
Description:
Call for papers: Pisa FRESH Meeting
Date: 19-20 April 2012
Venue: Institute of Economics, SantAnna School of Advanced Studies (Pisa, Italy)
Keynote speaker: Gregory Clark, Professor of Economics at UC Davis
FRESH meetings are aimed at researchers in any field of economic and social history. The meetings build on the concept that scholars present their ongoing research at an early stage, i.e. normally before it becomes published as a working paper or the like, and certainly before it is published in books or journals. The main aim of the meetings is to gather researchers in a friendly and collegial environment where they can present their research and receive constructive criticism from their peers.
The FRESH meeting organizers strive to accommodate as many speakers as possible. Accepted papers will normally receive 30 minutes each (20 minutes for presentation and 10 minutes for discussion). However, in the interest of avoiding parallel sessions, the presentation time may be shortened. In the event of space constraints, please note that members of the hosting faculty and geographically close institutions will be given preference.
The organizer offers refreshments, lunch, and dinner during the meeting, but travel and accommodation expenses will have to be covered by participants themselves. Also, there will be a registration fee for this meeting of 80 EUR payable on acceptance of your submission.
The Pisa FRESH meeting organizers are proud to announce that Professor of Economics Gregory Clark from UC Davis will attend the meeting as a keynote speaker and commentator.
Prospective speakers should submit a one-page abstract and a short CV to Alessandro Nuvolari (email: alessandro.nuvolari@sssup.it) no later than 15 January 2012. Notification of acceptance will be given by 31 January 2012.
The Pisa FRESH meeting is organized by Alessandro Nuvolari (local organizer), Rowena Gray, Paul Sharp and Jacob Weisdorf. For more information about FRESH meetings and FRESH membership, please visit the FRESH website at www.keynes.dk/FRESH
Would you like to organize a FRESH meeting?
FRESH meetings have no permanent venue but take place at any institution around the world where there is an interest in having the FRESH meeting. Hosting institutions will be asked to provide a venue, including electronic equipment, and, if possible, lunch and dinner for the meeting participants (usually 10-15 persons). If you would like to organize a FRESH meeting at your institution, please contact the meeting organizers (contact details on the FRESH website:www.keynes.dk/FRESH).
Would you like to keep updated on FRESH activities?
There are two ways to sign up for updates on our activities. You can either 'like' FRESH on our facebook page (www.facebook.com/freshmeetings), or you can subscribe to eh.news at eh.net.
Website: http://www.keynes.dk/fresh/meetings.htm
Contact Email: alessandro.nuvolari@sssup.it
Spring School in Oral History
Location: Institue of Historical Research, London
Date:
26/04/2012 - 28/04/2012
Description:
The Oral History Society and the Institute of Historical Research are launching the inaugural Spring School in Oral History. The school is open to anyone who has done some oral history work in the past .
The first two days of the school will focus on six major themes in oral history including memory, experience and representativeness.
The last day will look at best practice in teaching oral history and we will share ideas about teaching oral history in higher education, including resources, course costs and future developments.
The tutors will be: Professor Joanna Bornat, Open University; Dr Graham Smith, Royal Holloway, University of London; Dr Shelley Trower, University of Hull and Dr Anna Green, University of Exeter.
The course fee is 160.
To apply and for more information go to www.history.ac.uk/research-training/courses/oral-springschool
Website: www.ohs.org.uk
Contact Email: annecgulland@yahoo.co.uk
Retailing and Distribution in Hard Times
Location: Millennium City Building, University of Wolverhampton
Date:
02/05/2012
Description:
Call for Papers
CHORD Workshop: 'Retailing and Distribution in Hard Times'
University of Wolverhampton
2 May 2012
CHORD invites proposals for papers that explore retailing and distribution cultures and practices during economic downturns, busts and hard times, in Britain and beyond. Papers focusing on all historical periods and based on any methodological perspective are welcome as are papers that focus not only on the impact of absolute poverty, but also of impoverishment and declining living standards. Themes of interest include but are not limited to:
Commercial practices and the 'economy of makeshifts'
Retailing and distribution during recessions and depressions
Wealth and luxury in hard times; consumption and 'equality of sacrifice'
The marketing of austerity
Politics and the impact of the state
The role of charities, NGOs and voluntary organisations
Consumption and commerce in hard times in the media and popular culture
Black markets, profiteering, fat cats, forestallers and engrossers
To submit a proposal, please send, by 15 February 2012, title and abstract of c.300/400 words to: Laura Ugolini at l.ugolini@wlv.ac.uk .
For any other information, please contact Laura Ugolini at l.ugolini@wlv.ac.uk
Or see: http://home.wlv.ac.uk/~in6086/hardtimes.html
The workshop will be held in Millennium City Building, located on the University of Wolverhamptons City campus, just 10 minutes walk from Wolverhamptons bus and train stations.
Dr Laura Ugolini
Reader in History
Website: http://home.wlv.ac.uk/~in6086/hardtimes.html
Contact Email: l.ugolini@wlv.ac.uk
Public Policies & the Direction of Financial Flows
Location: Bucharest, Romania
Date:
07/06/2012 - 09/06/2012
Description:
Call for Papers
Many times in history, public authorities have decided to pursue economic policies (mainly development policies) by directing the financial flows of the economy. The central idea of the conference is to study this phenomenon using a comparative approach. The basic question to be addressed is therefore: Why and how did non-market forces (states, local authorities, international authorities, technical bodies) manage to direct financial flows so as to achieve specific goals, mainly related to economic development?
The motivations for adopting such policies need investigation: insufficiency of market forces, weakness of the financial institutions, a special macroeconomic context, urgency to achieve certain goals, are just some of the most common motivations, to be studied while considering, in the background, the ideology of the policymakers. Communist countries, capitalist countries, middle-of-the-road countries, war economies: all share, to some degree, devices to direct financial flows. The scope of the inquiry will include banks, which extend credit, insurance companies, which invest their reserves, as well as financial markets (via authorisations to issue shares, for example, or even via forced lending to the state).
Such management of financial flows may be achieved with a great variety of instruments, from laws to plans to regulations to government decisions to moral suasion. Most often, these devices coexist with other forms of economic regulation (on prices, investments, foreign trade, etc.), yet the focus of the papers should be on financial flows, and possibly on how the management of those interacted with other forms of regulation.
The transition of command economies to market economies is part of this subject matter, both because of profound changes in the structure of the economies involved and because new non-market forces, especially at the international level, have been operating in the process. How were the authorities in charge of the direction of
financial flows organised and how did they collect the relevant information? Did these authorities actually attain their aims? Assessments of the results of these policies including drawbacks, unwanted effects, interferences with other policies, etc.
Which bodies produced the documents and the statistics that cover the subject? Why were they preserved or destroyed? What does the architecture of the papers, their formal qualities, tell us about the policies concerning the direction of financial flows and the people which devised and managed them?
A comparative approach to the subject matter is encouraged, also by means of co-authorship.
Deadline for proposals: Monday, 19 September 2011.
Final papers: Monday, 19 Januaary 2012.
Website: www.eabh.info
Contact Email: info@bankinghistory.de
EABH Archival Workshop - Archives and the people
Location: Bucharest, Romania
Date:
07/06/2012
Description:
The European Association for Banking and Financial History e.V. (EABH e.V.) is calling for papers to be presented at the workshop:
Archives and the people - Recording working life in financial institutions
National Bank of Romania, Bucharest on Thursday 7 June 2012
Banking history is often dominated by the study of strategy, economics, banking dynasties and financial stars. The life of a bank is made up of more than this. It is the place of work and sometimes of the social life of hundreds, even thousands, of individuals whose experience is far removed from the headlines. It is the role of these individuals that we plan to explore in a workshop which will focus on the banks' staff: as creators of records, as subjects of study, and as recorders and interpreters of archives.
We look for papers that investigate how the records of bank staff can be used for wider social studies such as the history of trade unions and staff associations; social clubs; welfare provision etc.
We welcome practical contributions in the form of case studies about the relationship of the banks' staff to the archives, such as oral history programmes, volunteer projects and staff education.
We will also consider contributions from those who have experience of work outside the banking and finance sector where they are germane to the theme.
The workshop's aim is to encourage creative thinking and debate among the participants. As such, the programme committee is especially interested in presentations that contain not only a theoretical aspect, but which in addition actively engage the audience in observation and discussion.
Archivists, historians, researchers, scholars, (archival) staff trainers interested in presenting a paper or outlining their field of work in relation to the topic, should send a titled abstract (of approx. 500 words) with contact data and short CV (maximum of 5 lines), by Wednesday, 29 February 2012 to: info@bankinghistory.de
The submitted papers will then be reviewed by the workshop committee consisting of:
Melanie Aspey, The Rothschild Archive
Roger Nougaret, BNP Paribas, Archives et Histoire Groupe
Jakub Kunert, Archives of Czech National Bank
Alternatively follow this link:
http://www.eabh.info/start2.html
We are looking forward to your proposals.
Website: http://www.eabh.info/start2.html
Contact Email: info@bankinghistory.de
Website: http://www.eabh.info/start1.html
Contact Email: info@bankinghistory.de
Women in Magazines conference
Location: Kingston University, London
Date:
22/06/2012 - 23/06/2012
Description:
Call for Papers
Women in Magazines:
Research, Representation, Production and Consumption
In November 2011, Womans Weekly celebrated its 100 year birthday by including a reproduction of the first issue inside the centenary edition. A month later, US Vogue launched a digital archive containing every page published since 1892. These events remind us of the rich history which lies behind titles that continue to grace the shelves marked womens magazines on both sides of the Atlantic. Academics, especially feminist scholars, have long explored this history and the relationship between women and the journals that target them, but in recent years this interest appears to have declined. Women in Magazines seeks to reassert the importance of magazines, in Britain and America, as a significant source for womens and gender historians, by showcasing their latest research.
The conference is broad in scope, reflecting the interests of its supporting organisations: the Centre for the Historical Record (Kingston University), the Centre for American, Transatlantic and Caribbean History (Brunel University), the Society for the History of Women in the Americas (SHAW), the Womens History Network and The Womens Library. It will offer a platform for examining the role of women as producers, subjects and consumers of magazines; it will also explore magazines as important historical records which are being made more accessible by digital technology. The remit is neither bound by time period nor genre: womens relationships with specialist journals, trade magazines and non-gender specific lifestyle publications such as Ebony are of equal interest to traditional womens magazines. The aim is to encourage interdisciplinary dialogue alongside discussion between scholars and representatives of the contemporary magazine industry. An edited collection based on papers presented is planned.
The conference will be hosted by Kingston University, London, on 22-23 June 2012. Abstracts of 250 words should be sent to womeninmagazines@gmail.com by 9 March. Key themes for the event are consumption, lifecycles and age, race and ethnicity, social class, geography and location. Suggested topics could include, but are not limited to:
Advertising and marketing
Advice and education
Archives and digitization
Beauty and fashion
Celebrity culture
Editors and journalists
Entertainment and gossip
Gender ideology
Methodology and literature
Notions of public and private
Politics and citizenship
Readers, reading and reception studies
Relationships and the family
The home
The magazine industry
Work and careers
As well as thematic papers, we encourage reflections upon how we use magazines as a historic record. We also encourage papers that look at the 19th century or earlier and particularly welcome submissions that are transnational or comparative in scope.
http://womeninmagazines.tumblr.com/
Website: http://womeninmagazines.tumblr.com/
Contact Email: womeninmagazines@gmail.com
National Women's History Network Annual Conference
Location: Cardiff University
Date:
07/09/2012 - 09/09/2012
Description:
Our 2012 conference will focus on the relationship between women and the state, look at the processes of nation-building and consider the extent to which national identities have been gendered. Papers will consider the role of women and the impact of gender across all time-spans, regions and nations and must have a historical focus. Speakers are invited to present papers relevant to the theme of the conference which should ideally fit into one or more of the following strands.
■Women and patriotism
■Citizenship
■Political activism
■Families and nations
■Divided loyalties: women, religion and the state
■Imagining the nation
■Gender and late nationalisms
■The stateless: refugees and displaced people
■The supranational state
■Globalisation and the end of the nation
Please send abstracts of 250 words, by 29 February 2012, to:
Fiona Reid freid1@glam.ac.uk and Stephanie Ward WardSJ2@cardiff.ac.uk
Website: http://www.womenshistorynetwork.org/annualconf.html
Contact Email: freid1@glam.ac.uk
Immoral Business? Perspectives on Speculation
Location: Leibniz University of Hanover, Germany
Date:
25/01/2013 - 27/01/2013
Description:
Call for Papers:
Immoral Business? Perspectives on Speculation, Speculators, and Scandalous Profits
International Conference at Leibniz University Hanover, 25-27 January 2013
Conveners: Karl Christian Fuhrer, Kim Christian Priemel, and Cornelia Rauh
Scholars are invited to submit proposals for original papers to be presented at an interdisciplinary conference in Hanover, Germany, in January 2013. The conference will explore how economic actions come to be labelled as speculation in different societies and in diverse historical periods. It will specifically address questions such as how speculative trading was and is operated, how states and societies react to the phenomenon of speculation, and how the incurred profits or losses are publically assessed.
The basic definition of economic speculation appears to be innocent enough: speculators anticipate changes in prices for certain goods and try to take advantage of these up- or downswings. While such deals may well be regarded as one of the most common traits of any market economy, speculation has often and most prominently in the recent financial crisis become a widely applied and easily understood pejorative term in political discussions. More often than not it is used in a moralistic discourse and as a synonym for greed, irresponsibility, or recklessness.
Defence of speculation is rare and hardly part of topical debates. However, economists, including free-market sceptics such as Paul Krugman, have frequently argued that even high-risk speculations intended to disrupt the exchange rates of currencies can have positive, if unintended economic effects. More generally, speculation is often seen as a mechanism by which technical innovations are financed and the allocation of goods and resources is optimised. In some, albeit few cases, moral counter-arguments have been advanced: from a radical free-market perspective speculation can and historically has been presented as a form of superior individual freedom and accordingly as an essential element of any free society.
Papers presented in the conference should not aim to decide these political and ideological feuds (although they might wish to side with one or the other). Instead they should make these perceptions of and perspectives on economic speculation and speculators the very object of their analysis. As markets do not evolve according to eternal, quasi-mechanical rules but are culturally coded and socially negotiated, economic actions take place in a social context which is shaped and influenced by human perceptions, emotions, knowledge, and beliefs and thus liable to changes, inconsistencies, and contradictions. Profit-seeking individuals therefore do not act as (more or less well but certainly not perfectly informed) agents of static economic laws, but as members of social formations which vary significantly in time and space.
Speculation thus offers an excellent example to study economy as a historically contingent, socially constructed field of action. Its highly contested character clearly derives from a wide range of social interactions encompassing not only business protagonists (traders, brokers, shareholders, bankers, et al), but also politicians and state officials engaged in regulatory efforts as well as other stakeholders such as labour representatives, scholars, the lay public, and the media. As such, speculation offers a rich field for interdisciplinary and comparative studies. The conference, we hope, will be joined not only by historians and economists, but also by participants from Sociology, Anthropology, Theology, Criminology, and Media and Cultural Studies. Both papers on historical cases of speculation and on recent developments are welcome; internationally comparative presentations are especially encouraged. Participants should be prepared to give a 20 minutes presentation at the conference followed by discussion.
Questions to be addressed in the papers may include:
Which forms of speculation can be distinguished? Under what circumstances is speculation regarded as functional or as disruptive both in economic and in social terms?
What are the differences between speculators and ordinary economic agents? Do the notions of greed and of undeserved profits necessarily form part of debates about speculation and speculators? Or is speculation only scandalized once it has failed? Can greed, as Gordon Gecko has it, be good?
In what way are speculation and its protagonists perceived by the general public of his or her time? Is there a public image of the speculator and if so who shapes that image at different times, in different places, and by what means? Is speculation a topic in high-brow art, the popular arts, and/or the media? Do economic actors conceive of themselves as speculators?
Which efforts have public authorities historically made to prevent or check speculation and with what results? Are such policies tied to notions of a moral economy meant to control profits and self-interest for the sake of the common good?
Please send an abstract of 150-200 words of your paper along with a brief CV (one page at the most) to: Cornelia.Rauh@hist-uni.hannover.de by 15 February 2012. All submissions should be sent as e-mail attachments (Word , Rtf, Pdf). At the moment, reimbursement of travel expanses cannot be guaranteed. However, we are optimistic that funding will be provided. There will be no conference fees.
Cornelia Rauh
Cornelia.Rauh@hist.uni-hannover.de
Contact Email: Cornelia.Rauh@hist.uni-hannover.de
