Economic History Society Postdoctoral Visiting Fellowships

The Economic History Society, in conjunction with the Institute of Historical Research, offers up to three one-year postdoctoral Fellowships in economic and/or social history, tenable at the Institute from 1 October 2024. Fellows will not be required to be resident in London but should participate in the activities of the Institute by regular attendance at, and presentation of papers to, appropriate seminars – including the Fellows’ Seminar – and by giving information and help to fellow scholars working in the same field.

Eligibility

The Fellowships will be awarded to postdoctoral candidates who have recently completed a doctoral degree in economic and/or social history, or who will have submitted their thesis for examination by 1 October in the academic year in which the Fellowship is to be held. The Fellowships are open to candidates who are British citizens and/or holders of a degree from a British university. It is the intention of the Economic History Society to promote work of a kind that might be published in the leading refereed academic journals in economic and/or social history. Fellows will be expected to pursue research in economic and/or social history at an advanced level with a view to publication.

These awards cannot be held in conjunction with any other substantial maintenance grant, nor can they be used to  fund a sabbatical year for the holder of a permanent academic position. Fellows may engage in teaching or other paid work for up to six hours per week.

It is important that applicants demonstrate that the research proposed in their applications is in the field of economic and/or social history.

Stipends

The Fellowships will be worth £22,000 if you are affiliated with an institution based outside of London, or £24,000 if  you are affiliated with an institution based in London. The stipend will be payable in four instalments through the Institute.

In addition, the Economic History Society will fund travel costs for each Fellow for up to four visits to the Institute of Historical Research during the period of their Fellowship, subject to the provision of receipts and the Society’s standard procedures for funding travel expenses within the UK. Fellows are eligible to apply to the Economic History Society’s Research Fund for Graduate Students to support minor research costs and conference attendance.

Please note, applications must be received at the Institute of Historical Research no later than 31 January 2024. Incomplete applications, or applications arriving after this date, will not be considered.

• Full details

  Affiliation

  Fellows must be affiliated with a British university for the duration of their Fellowships. In this context, ‘affiliation’ means an informal arrangement whereby Fellows will have access to academic staff who are familiar with their area  of research and with whom they can discuss their work. This does not need to be arranged during the application process, although, if called for interview, candidates should be able to suggest likely institutions.

  It is the responsibility of Fellows to ensure that the university with which they are affiliated provides the support that they require.

  Visas

  Fellows, if they do not have the right to reside and study in the UK, will require a visa, and must ascertain what category of visa is most suitable for them.

  The University of London is licensed to issue sponsorship certificates for Tier 5 visas. If Fellows need to enter the UK under a Tier 5 visa, they should apply for a sponsorship certificate through the IHR Fellowship Office, which they can then use in their visa application to the Home Office. Further details of visa categories can be found here.

  Equality, Diversity and Inclusion

  We welcome our duties under the Equality Act 2010, as part of our commitment to ensuring equality of opportunity for all.

  The University was founded upon the principles of equality and established to provide education on the basis of merit. Since then we have amended our Statutes to include the following statement from the University of London Statutes: “The University shall not discriminate against any person on the grounds of race, nationality, ethnic origin, gender, sexual orientation, marital status, disability, age, religion, social background or political belief. (21.1).”

  We are committed to preserving and promoting fellowship opportunities to individuals whose lives are incompatible with the normal established patterns of work. This could be due to personal or domestic circumstances, physical or mental disabilities.

  Flexible fellowship requests could include, but are not limited to, the following:

  • Part-time working
  • Temporary suspension of the fellowship

  We will give consideration to all fellows’ requests for flexible terms, whether the request is for a permanent, short-term or trial adaptation in the terms.

  Please see further details of the University of London’s and the Economic History Society’s Diversity and Inclusion policies and strategies at:

  https://london.ac.uk/about-us/equality-diversity-and-inclusion
  https://ehs.org.uk/about/policies/equality-diversity/

  Final Report

  Within three months of the end of the Fellowship period (i.e. 1 July 2025), each Fellow will send to the Institute of Historical Research (by email) a written report on the Fellowship experience, detailing the activities undertaken during the period of their Fellowship and an outline of future career plans.

  Selection Policies

  The EHS is committed to promoting diversity and the interview panel will be chosen accordingly. Panel members will assess the quality of applications with reference to the following criteria:

  • The academic record of the candidate as exhibited by CV and references.
  • The importance of the proposed research to the applicant’s field and its prospects for publication in a leading academic journal or monograph series in economic and/or social history.
  • The prospects for completing research within the time projected and funds awarded.
  • All other considerations being equal, the candidate’s likely contribution to the academic life of the IHR.

  The School of Advanced Study: what it offers

  Applicants are strongly advised to investigate the resources that are available to them within the University of  London, and particularly at the School of Advanced Study, to which the IHR belongs.

  IHR Fellows are welcomed into a progressive and supportive academic environment, consisting of a cohort of approximately 20 doctoral or early career Fellows, academic staff, and Senior Fellows. Fellows will be offered mentorship by the IHR’s academics and other staff across the School of Advanced Study. This will include help in planning the future, through: career advice; assistance with applications for jobs, postdocs and fellowships; mock interviews; and guidance with publication plans and research grant applications. Augmenting our close connections across academia, the IHR’s extensive partnerships will be open to those Fellows who are interested in working in sectors outside of the academy.  Fellows will have the support of our Fellowships Officer throughout the fellowship. At the IHR they will have access to our world-renowned Wohl Library, our electronic resources, and our extensive seminar and events programme.

  Our Fellows’ seminar programme provides an opportunity for each Fellow to present their research in a collegial atmosphere, before their peers, senior historians, and others. Fellows have free access to the IHR’s research training courses, and are offered a number of exclusive, tailored training workshops.

  Further Particulars

  The Economic History Society’s objective in awarding the Fellowships is to further research in economic and/or social history by enabling new researchers to strengthen their research record with a view to following a career which will enable them to undertake high-quality research in the field. The Power and Postan Fellowships are also supported financially by the Power and Postan Fellowships trusts administered by the London School of Economics. Candidates may be asked at the interview what difference a fellowship would make to their prospects of sustaining research in economic and/or social history in future.

  Holders of fellowships should acknowledge the Society’s financial support in publications which result from the Fellowship.

  The Society seeks to encourage research across a broad range of economic and/or social history.

• Current and past awards

  2023/24

  Power Fellowship:
  Juan José Rivas Moreno (UCL)
  The capital market of Manila and the organisation of early modern long-distance trade beyond the corporation, 1750-1828

  Postan Fellowship:
  Grace Owen (Exeter)
  Manorial officers as mediators and managers: a lens for examining change and the lord-peasant relationship in medieval England, 1250-1450

  Tawney Fellowship:
  Li Jiang (Exeter)
  Rural wage workers in early-modern England

  2022/23

  Power Fellowship:
  Tehreem Husain (LSE/UCL)
  Foreign investment and infrastructure financing: Railways during the First Age of Globalisation

  Postan Fellowship:
  Lewis Wade (Northumbria)
  Privilege at a premium: Insurance, maritime law and political economy in early modern France, 1664-c.1710

  Tawney Fellowship:
  Ying Dai (Cambridge)
  The occupational structure of the Yangtze Valley in the twentieth century

  2021/22

  Power Fellowship: Stephanie Brown (KCL)
  Identity and the prosecution of interpersonal violence in late medieval Yorkshire, 1340-85

  Postan Fellowship: Alka Raman (V&A)
  Learning from the muse: Indian cotton textiles and British industrialisation

  Tawney Fellowship: Purba Hossain (Leeds)
  Situating the ‘Coolie Question’: Indentured labour and post-slavery debates in mid-nineteenth century Calcutta

  Anniversary Fellowship: Laura Channing (LSE)
  Colonial taxation and taxpayers in Sierra Leone, c.1890s-1937

  2020/21

  Power Fellowship: Hannah Telling (Glasgow)
  The legal regulation of male violence in Scotland, 1850-1914

  Postan Fellowship: Sadie Jarrett (Bangor)
  ‘Of great kindred and alliance’: The status and identity of the Salesburys of Rhug and Bachymbyd, c.1475-c.1660

  Tawney Fellowship: Joseph La Hausse de Lalouvière (Harvard)
  Enslavement and empire in the French Caribbean, 1793-1851

  Anniversary Fellowship: Damian Clavel (Oxford)
  Financial fraud, sovereign debt and business imperialism: A micro-history of Poyais’ failure 1820-24

  2019/20

  Power Fellowship: Rebecca Mason (Glasgow)
  Married women, property and law in early modern Scotland

  Postan Fellowship: Matt Raven (UCL)
  Wool smuggling in fourteenth-century England: Economy, state and society in the late middle ages

  Tawney Fellowship: Joshua Rhodes (Cambridge)
  New perspectives on capitalist farming in England, 1700-1800

  Anniversary Fellowship: Charlie Taverner (Birkbeck, London)
  Food and early modern social history

  2018/19

  Power Fellowship: Mark Hay (King’s College London)
  The matriarchs of Amsterdam high finance: Female financial management and the consolidation of the Amsterdam capital market, 1813-25

  Postan Fellowship: Hannah Robb (Manchester)
  Arbitration and credit in the Ecclesiastical Courts of York

  Tawney Fellowship: Hannah Young (Huddersfield)
  Gender, family and British slave-ownership

  Anniversary Fellowship: David Hope (Newcastle)
  Britain and the fur trade: Companies, commerce, and consumers in the North-Atlantic world, 1783-1821

  2017/18

  Power Fellowship: Angela Muir (Cardiff)
  Deviant maternity: Illegitimacy in eighteenth-century Wales

  Postan Fellowship: Irene Bavuso (Oxford)
  Political and economic development on frontiers: the Scheldt-Meuse Paradigm

  Tawney Fellowship: Meng Wu (LSE)
  Cooperation or confrontation? A comparative study of Chinese modern banks and foreign banks in China, 1912-37

  Anniversary Fellowship: Rebecca Simson (LSE)
  Social mobility in postcolonial Africa

  2016/17

  Power Fellowship: Charmian Mansell (Exeter)
  A new history of female service in early modern England, 1550-1650

  Postan Fellowship: Joseph Harley (Sussex)
  Life in the English workhouse, c.1690-1834

  Tawney Fellowship: Gary Luk (Cambridge)
  Water borders: ethnicities, empires, and trades in late Imperial and Modern China’s Littorals

  Anniversary Fellowship: Karolina Hutkova (LSE)
  British political economy and the nineteenth-century Bengal silk industry

  2015/16

  Power Fellowship: John Morgan (Exeter)
  Financing flood security in eastern England, 1567-1826

  Postan Fellowship: Paul Kreitman (SOAS)
  Economic and social dimensions of sovereignty in the North Pacific, 1861-1965

  Tawney Fellowship: Judy Stephenson (Cambridge)
  Occupation and labour market institutions in London 1600-1800

  Anniversary Fellowship: Alice Dolan (UCL)
  Re-fashioning the working class: mechanisation and materiality in England 1800-56

  2014/15

  Power Fellowship: Pamela Schievenin (Glasgow)
  Being a working woman in a Catholic country: work and identity in post-war Italy, 1945-70

  Postan Fellowship: Jordan Claridge (Cambridge)
  Managing milk, making a living: dairying and dairypeople in medieval England c.1250-1450

  Tawney Fellowship: Caroline Nielsen (UCL)
  Disabled by the state: the Pensioners of the Chest at Chatham and their communities, 1660-1807

  Anniversary Fellowship: Natacha Postel-Vinay (Warwick)
  Financial stability and deposit insurance in developed economies, 1920-present

  2013/14

  Power Fellowship: Amanda Wilkinson (Essex)
  Invisible workers? The recording of women’s occupations in the Victorian censuses

  Postan Fellowship: Ling Fan Li (LSE)
  The stop of Exchequer: was English domestic and international credit market disintegrated?

  Tawney Fellowship: Maria Waldinger (LSE)
  How does the effect of climate on economic growth change in an industrialising world? Evidence from variation in temperature changes and industrialisation in Europe, 1500-1950

  Anniversary Fellowship: David Churchill (Birkbeck College, London)
  Crime, commerce and security in nineteenth-century England

  2012/13

  Power Fellowship: Jennifer Aston (Birmingham)
  Feckless fraudsters or feeble failures? Female bankruptcy in Victorian and Edwardian England

  Postan Fellowship: Alex Brown (Durham)
  Estate management and institutional constraints in rural economic development in the north of England, 1400-1640

  Tawney Fellowship: James Bowen (Lancaster)
  Contrasting commons: cottagers, common land and common right in pre-industrial England and Wales

  Anniversary Fellowship: James Boyd (Cardiff)
  The costs of German economic unification

  2011/12

  Power Fellowship: Justin Colson (RHUL)
  Neighbourhoods, networks and trades: local society in London, c.1400-1540

  Postan Fellowship: Katerina Galani (Oxford)
  From Constantinople to the City of London: Greek merchant bankers, 1820-80

  Tawney Fellowship: Carry van Lieshout (KCL)
  The eighteenth-century water market: natural resources, market institutions and mediating distance

  Anniversary Fellowship: Eric Golson (Oxford)
  Dictatorship over food? The causes of the Spanish famine, 1939-59

  EHS Fellowship: David Pretel (Cambridge)
  Crossing empires: foreign patenting activities in the Spanish Caribbean plantation economy, 1850-1902

  2010/11

  Power Fellowship: Ceri-Anne Fidler (Cardiff)
  Lascars, c.1850-1950: The lives and identities of Indian seafarers in Imperial Britain

  Postan Fellowship: Niels van Manen (York)
  The Climbing Boy Campaigns: new perspectives on governance, medicine and childhood in Britain, c.1770-1840

  Tawney Fellowship: Siobhan Talbott (St Andrews) (Until December 2010)
  ‘Every man lives by exchanging’: The British commercial dynamic on the French Atlantic Coast, c.1603-1707

  Tawney Fellowship: Mark Hailwood (Warwick) (From April 2011)
  Alehouses and sociability in seventeenth-century England

  Anniversary Fellowship: Alison Gilmour (Glasgow)
  Examining the ‘hard-boiled bunch’: Work culture and industrial relations at the Linwood car plant, c.1963-81

  2009/10

  Power Fellowship: Rebecca Oakes (Winchester)
  Mortality and life expectancy: Winchester College and New College, Oxford c. 1393 – c. 1540

  Postan Fellowship: Alexandra Sapoznik (Cambridge)
  English peasant agriculture in the fourteenth century

  Tawney Fellowship: Koji Yamamoto (York)
  The culture of projecting in seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century England: distrust, innovations, and public service

  Anniversary Fellowship: Amy Lloyd (Cambridge)
  Popular perceptions of emigration in Britain

  2008/9

  Power Fellowship: Bronach Kane (York)
  Memory and gender in the late medieval church courts of York

  Postan Fellowship: Aashish Velkar (LSE)
  Markets, standards and transactions: measurements in the nineteenth century British economy

  Tawney Fellowship: Henry Meier (Birkbeck)
  Smallpox in Stuart London: causes and effects of an emerging disease

  Anniversary Fellowship: Stuart Sweeney (Oxford)
  Indian railways in the period of high imperialism, 1875-1914: war, famine and gentlemanly capitalism

  2007/8

  Power Fellowship: Ayowa Afrifa Taylor (LSE)
  An economic history of the Ashanti Goldfields Corporation, 1895-2004: land, labour, capital, enterprise

  Postan Fellowship: Mark Smith (School of Slavonic and East European Studies)
  Rubble to Communism: the urban housing programme in the Soviet Union, 1944-64

  Tawney Fellowship: Jonathan Healey (Oxford)
  Marginality and misfortune: poverty and social welfare in Lancashire, c.1630-1760

  Anniversary Fellowship: Katie Barclay (Glasgow)
  Marital relationships in Scotland, 1650-1850

  2006/7

  Power Fellowship: Gagan Sood (Paul Mellon Centre)
  Eurasia and the transition to modernity: the framework of mercantile relations; a cross-cultural trade in the Arabian Sea region, c.1730-90

  Postan Fellowship: Natalya Chernyshova (KCL)
  Shopping with Brezhnev: Soviet urban consumer culture, 1964-85

  Tawney Fellowship: Nicole Robertson (Nottingham)*
  The impact of the co-operative movement on communities in the Midlands, 1914-60

  *Monograph published 2010: The Cooperative Movement and Communities in Britain, 1914-60

  2005/6

  Power Fellowship: Matthew Stevens (Aberystwyth)
  Race, gender and wealth in a medieval Welsh borough: access to capital, market participation and status in Ruthin, 1312-22

  Postan Fellowship: Emma Jones (RHUL)
  Abortion in England, 1861-1967

  Tawney Fellowship: Miatta Fahnbulleh (LSE)
  The elusive quest for industrialisation in Africa: a comparative study of Ghana and Kenya, c.1950-2000

  2004/5

  Power Fellowship: Philadelphia Ricketts (Liverpool)
  A comparison of widows’ power, property and family strategies in Iceland and Yorkshire in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries

  Postan Fellowship: Mark Rothery (Exeter)
  The social transformation of a traditional elite in modern England: the landed gentry of Devon, Lincolnshire and Hertfordshire c.1870-1939

  Tawney Fellowship: Abigail Wills (Cambridge)
  Making citizens: reforming the juvenile delinquent, England 1950-70

  2003/4

  Postan Fellowship: Tracy Denison (Cambridge)
  The extent of commerce and the land market within Russian serfdom, a detailed case study

  Power Fellowship: James Walker (LSE)
  The decline of the British motor industry: product design, advertising and gender

  Tawney Fellowship: Matteo Rizzo (SOAS)
  Re-evaluation of the long term influence of the Ground Nuts Scheme in southern Tanzania

  Anniversary Fellowship: Christopher Beauchamp (Cambridge)
  The institutional and legal framework constituting the politics of the telephone industry in Britain and the US

  2002/3

  Power Fellowship: Julie Marfany (Cambridge)
  Industrialisation and demographic change in Catalonia, 1680-1829

  Postan Fellowship: Ben Dodds (Durham)
  Using tithe evidence to consider shifts in agrarian output between the peasant and demesne sectors between the Tyne and Tees, 1350-1450

  Tawney Fellowship: James Taylor (Kent, Canterbury)
  ‘Wealth makes worship’: attitudes to joint stock enterprise in British law, politics, and culture, c.1800-c.1870

  Anniversary Fellowship: Sakis Gekas (Essex)
  The merchant elite of the Ionian Islands under British rule, 1815-64

  2001/2

  Power Fellowship: Rosemary Elliot (Glasgow)
  Smoking and social identity among women in the twentieth century

  Postan Fellowship: Martin Rorke (Edinburgh)
  Scottish overseas trade, 1275/86-1597

  Tawney Fellowship: James Davis (Cambridge)
  The perceptions and reality of traders and commercialisation in medieval Suffolk, 1350-1450

  2000/1

  Power Fellowship: Susan Wright (Sheffield Hallam)
  Mass tourism as an individual experience: a history of package tourism, 1950-90

  Postan Fellowship (split between 2 candidates):
  (1) Ilaria Meliconi (Oxford)
  From tools to machines and from workshop to factory: industrialisation in British scientific instruments, 1862-1900
  (2) Mar Rubio (LSE)
  The inclusion of resource depletion into measures of economic performance. Oil depletion in Mexico and Venezuela along the twentieth century

  Tawney Fellowship: Jerome Destombes (LSE)
  Inherited deprivation in a changing savanna. Poverty traps in north-eastern Ghana, c.1930-90

  1999/2000

  Power Fellowship: Helen Macnaughtan (LSE)
  The female workforce in post-war Japan 1955-75: the case of the cotton textile industry

  Postan Fellowship: Tanya Evans (Goldsmiths, London)
  Unmarried motherhood in eighteenth century London

  Tawney Fellowship: Mark Freeman (Glasgow)
  The history of social investigation in Britain 1870-1914, with special reference to rural life

• Application details

  Deadlines

  • Complete applications must be received at the Institute of Historical Research no later than 31 January 2024. Incomplete applications or applications arriving after this date will not be considered.
  • Before completing your application you will need to create an account in the online application system. It can take up to 24 hours for new accounts to be approved (and approvals are not made over the weekend) so please ensure you create your account well in advance of the competition deadline.
  • Interviews will be held during the week of 8 – 12 April 2024.

  Application Contents

  As well as completing the ‘Personal Details’, ‘Education’, ‘Academic contribution’, ‘Referees’, and ‘Equal  opportunities’ sections of the form, applicants should upload the following three documents:

  • A one-page CV, listing any educational details, publications, research papers, and other relevant academic information not submitted elsewhere in the application.
  • A summary of the doctoral thesis (no more than 750 words).
  • A postdoctoral research proposal with timetable for completion (no more than 1,000 words). This should include a clear statement indicating how the proposal contributes to the existing literature on economic and/or social history.

  Applicants to the Economic History Society Fellowships do not need to upload the sample of written work which is requested in the ‘Upload documents’ section of the online application form.

  Application  Format

  • Hard copy applications will be deemed ineligible. Only applications made using the IHR’s online application system will be considered.
  • Applications for which the requested supporting documents (one-page CV, thesis summary, and research proposal) are not uploaded will be deemed ineligible.
  • Applications that do not receive their full complement of two supporting letters of reference will not be considered. It is the applicant’s responsibility to ensure that their referees supply letters in support of the application.

  Before you can apply, you will need to request an account on the IHR Online Application System. Approval of this can take up to 24 hours.

  References

  Once an application has been short-listed, a standard email will be sent automatically to the addresses supplied by the applicant in the ‘Referees’ section of the online application form. This will provide the referees with a link to the online system, where they can upload their reference letter. These letters must be uploaded to the online application system directly by the referee, not by the applicant. Applicants may arrange, instead, for a portfolio of generic references to be sent by their university, where such a service is offered.

  It is the applicant’s responsibility to ensure that his/her referees supply letters in support of the application, and it is strongly advised that referees are contacted well before the application is submitted. Short-listed applications which do not receive their full complement of two supporting letters of recommendation by the deadline set by the Fellowships Office will not be considered.

  Apply online