Center for History and Economics

News Archive

Emma Rothschild was awarded the 2022 Guggenheim Prize for the History of Economic Thought at the Accademia dei Lincei in Rome.

Emma Rothschild was awarded the 2022 Leo Gershoy Award for her book An Infinite History: The Story of a Family in France over Three Centuries.

Congratulations to Jingyi Huang, EHP-CHEP fellow, on the award of the Allan Nevins Prize in American Economic History.

The Program of Prize Fellowships in Economics, History and Politics is delighted to announce the 2022 Prize Fellows. They are: Mallory Hope, Ellen Muir, Karthik Sastry, and Tara Suri.

The Center congratulates Nikolas Bowie, Faculty Associate, on the 2021 Sacks-Freund Award for Teaching Excellence, for teaching ability, attentiveness to student concerns, and contributions to student life at Harvard Law School.

The Center for History and Economics congratulates Carissa Chen '21, Koji Everard '21, Archie Hall '20-'21, Claire Shi '21, and Lux Zhao '21, Undergraduate Research Associates, on the award of the Hoopes Prize for outstanding senior theses.

The Center congratulates Francesca Trivellato, EHP Senior Fellow and member of the Center's Executive Committee, on the award of the Jacques Barzun Prize in Cultural History for The Promise and Peril of Credit.

Alexia Yates, Prize Fellow in Economics, History, and Politics at the Harvard Center in 2011-2014, Center Research Associate, and Associate Research Fellow at the Cambridge Centre, was awarded a 2020 Philip Leverhulme Prize for "researchers at an early stage of their careers whose work has had international impact and whose future research career is exceptionally promising."

The Center congratulates Jeremy Zallen, Graduate Research Associate 2009-2014, who has received the 2020 Albert J. Beveridge Award from the American Historical Association for his book American Lucifers: The Dark History of Artificial Light, 1750–1865.

We are very pleased to announce a new project by David Todd on French Expatriates in Ottoman Egypt which has been published on the Visualizing Historical Networks website.

The Center warmly congratulates Diana Kim, EHP Fellow at the Harvard Center 2013-2016, on receiving a 2020 Robert B. Silvers Grant for Work in Progress for her research into colonial legacies and Japan's wartime empire in Southeast Asia.

David Yang has received a new grant for research on Civil Liberties in the Time of Health and Economic Crises.

Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer have been awarded the 2019 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel.

Alisha Holland has been awarded the 2020 Seligson Prize.

The Joint Center for History and Economics is delighted to announce CHEP, a new project with Sciences Po: CHE in Paris – Histories of Economic Life.

Nikolas Bowie won the Delancey K. Jay Prize at Harvard for the best essay on any subject relating to the history or development of constitutional government and free institutions.

Sunaina Danziger and Jules Qiu, Undergraduate Research Associates, have been awarded Hoopes Prizes for their senior theses.

The UN History Project has launched a new section, Images of Disability, created by Wonik Son (Harvard College '19).

Padraic Scanlan, History and Politics Research Fellow at Harvard in 2013-2016, won the 2018 James A. Rawley Prize in Atlantic History for his book Freedom’s Debtors: British Antislavery in Sierra Leone in the Age of Revolution.

Fahad Bishara, Economics, History and Politics Research Fellow at Harvard in 2012-2014, has won the 2018 J. Willard Hurst Prize for best book in socio-legal history by the Law and Society Association for A Sea of Debt: Law and Economic Life in the Western Indian Ocean.

Fahad Bishara, Economics, History and Politics Research Fellow at Harvard in 2012-2014, has been awarded the 2018 World History Association Bentley Book Prize for A Sea of Debt: Law and Economic Life in the Western Indian Ocean.

Rachel Leow, History and Politics Research Fellow at Harvard in 2011-2014, received the 2018 Harry J. Benda Prize in Southeast Asian Studies for her book Taming Babel: Language in the Making of Malaysia.

Padraic Scanlan, History and Politics Research Fellow at Harvard in 2013-2016, won the Wallace K. Ferguson prize for his book Freedom’s Debtors: British Antislavery in Sierra Leone in the Age of Revolution.

Ian Kumekawa has been awarded the Joseph J. Spengler Prize for the Best Book on the History of Economics, awarded in June 2018 to The First Serious Optimist: A. C. Pigou and the Birth of Welfare Economics.

Fahad Bishara, Economics, History and Politics Research Fellow at Harvard in 2012-2014, has been awarded the J. Willard Hurst Prize for the best book in socio-legal history published in 2017 for A Sea of Debt: Law and Economic Life in the Western Indian Ocean.

Alisha C. Holland, former Graduate Research Associate of the Center, has been awarded the Herbert Jacob Book Prize for the best book in law and society scholarship published in 2017, for Forbearance as Redistribution. The Politics of Informal Welfare in Latin America, Cambridge University Press, 2017.

Sunil Amrith, Director of the Harvard Center and Prize Research Student at the Cambridge Centre, 2001-2002, has been awarded a 2017 MacArthur Fellowship.

Building Suburban Power, by Paige Glotzer, is a new website associated with the Visualizing Historical Networks project.

Nikolas Bowie, Graduate Research Associate of the Harvard Center since 2010 and Mellon Visiting Researcher at the Cambridge Centre, is Assistant Professor of Law at Harvard Law School.

The Center is pleased to announce a new website, 1950s China-India Chronology, by Arunabh Ghosh.

The 2016 Infosys Prize in Humanities was awarded to Sunil Amrith on January 7, 2017, in Bangalore – see here and here, and the 2016 Infosys Prize in Social Sciences was awarded to Kaivan Munshi – see here and here.

A new website, Invisible Histories, is coordinated by Franziska Exeler and Diana Kim

Alexia Yates has been awarded the Wallace K. Ferguson prize for her book Selling Paris: Property and Commercial Culture in the Fin-de-siècle Capital.

"Economies of Privilege" and "Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge", have been added to the Visualizing Historical Networks Project.

The Joint Centre for History and Economics mourns the death on January 1, 2017 of Sir Tony Atkinson, great economist, founding member of the Centre’s Executive Committee, frequent visitor, with Judith Atkinson, to the Harvard Center, and the inspiration of so much extraordinary scholarship on inequality, poverty and public economics.

The Program of Prize Fellowships in Economics, History and Politics is delighted to announce the Prize Fellows for the academic years 2016/2017 to 2018/2019. They are: Shane Bobrycki (Harvard), Paige Glotzer (Johns Hopkins), Nikhil Naik (MIT) and Melissa Teixeira (Princeton).

The Joint Center for History and Economics is delighted to welcome Professor Abhijit Banerjee, Ford Foundation International Professor of Economics, MIT to the Harvard Executive Committee.

The Joint Center for History and Economics is delighted to announce that Professor Sunil Amrith has been appointed as a Director of the Harvard Center. Professor Amrith is Mehra Family Professor of South Asian Studies and Professor of History at Harvard. He was a Prize Research Student at the Cambridge Centre in 2001-2002, and has been associated with the Centre ever since, both at Cambridge and at Harvard. His most recent book is Crossing the Bay of Bengal: The Furies of Nature and the Fortunes of Migrants, and he is now writing a history of water and environmental change in South Asia. We welcome him most warmly.

Nathaniel Donahue, Undergraduate Research Associate, has been awarded a Hoopes prize for his senior thesis.

The French version of the "Angoulême in 1764" website, in the Visualizing Historical Social Networks project, was launched in the Angoulême Hôtel de Ville on February 10, 2015. It was described as an "incroyable travail de fourmi."

Sunil Amrith was appointed Mehra Family Professor of South Asian Studies and Professor of History, and has joined the Executive Committee of the Harvard Center.

Alexia Yates, Economics, History and Politics Research Fellow at Harvard in 2011-2014, will be an Associate Research Fellow at the Cambridge Centre while a Mellon Newton interdisciplinary Research Fellow at CRASSH in 2014-2016.

William O'Reilly will be visiting the Harvard Center from mid-October 2014, in connection with new work on shipping and migration in the eighteenth century.

Tyler Goodspeed, Research Associate of the Harvard Center and Prize Research Student at the Cambridge Centre, 2008-2009, was awarded the 2014 Alexander Gerschenkron Prize of the Economic History Association "for the best dissertation in the economic history of an area outside of the United States or Canada."

Center Research Associate Shane Bobrycki was awarded the Derek C. Book Award for Excellence in Graduate Student Teaching of Undergraduates.

Professor Sugata Bose, research associate of the Harvard Center, has been elected to the Indian Parliament from the constituency of Jadavpur. Professor Bose is on public service leave from Harvard.

The Joint Center congratulates its director, Emma Rothschild, on her recent award of an honorary doctorate from the University of Edinburgh.

A new website on history and the law has been launched in connection with the Exchanges project. The website is coordinated by Rohit De and Fei-Hsien Wang, Mellon Postdoctoral Research Fellows at the Centre for History and Economics in Cambridge.

Noah Millstone, Prize Fellow in Economics, History and Politics, has been awarded the Harvard University Certificate of Teaching Excellence; Elizabeth Cross, graduate research associate, on the award of the Harvard University Certificate of Distinction in Teaching; Philipp Lehmann, graduate research associate, on the award of the Harvard University Certificate of Distinction in Teaching; James Martin, graduate research associate, on the award of the Harvard University Certificate of Distinction in Teaching; Josh Specht, graduate research associate, on the award of the Harvard University Certificate of Distinction in Teaching; and Jeremy Zallen, graduate research associate, on the award of the Harvard University Certificate of Distinction in Teaching.

A new website has been launched in connection with the Energy History Project.

A new website has been launched in connection with the project on Visualizing Historical Networks.

Rachel Leow, Prize Fellow in Economics, History and Politics at the Harvard Center has been appointed Lecturer in East Asian History at the University of Cambridge, starting 2013.

Aditya Balasubramanian, Julian Gewirtz, and Ryan Rossner,Center undergraduate research associates, have been awarded Hoopes Prizes for their senior theses.

Ben Golub, Prize Research Fellow in Economics, History and Politics, will join the Harvard Economics Department as Assistant Professor of Economics, starting in 2015.

Eva Bitran, Graduate Research Associate at the Center, has been awarded a Paul and Daisy Soros fellowship for New Americans.

The website for The Inner Life of Empires: An Eighteenth-Century History by Emma Rothschild is available at fas.harvard.edu/~histecon/innerlife/

David Todd, Associate Research Fellow of the Cambridge Centre and coordinator of the Exchanges of Economic, Legal and Political Ideas program, on the award of a Philip Leverhulme Prize for outstanding scholars, for his work on the global history of ideas. Dr Todd is Lecturer in World History at King's College London, and was a Visiting Fellow at the Harvard Center in 2007-2008 and 2008-2009.

The United Nations History Project website, developed at the Joint Center for History and Economics and the Harvard Asia Center with the support of the United Nations Foundation, can be found at www.unhistoryproject.org.

Kerry Clark, Ian Kumekawa and Alexa Rahman, undergraduate research associates, were awarded Hoopes Prizes for their senior theses.

Alexia Yates, Economics, History and Politics Prize Fellow, was awarded the Krooss Prize for the Best Dissertation in Business History.

Sunil Amrith, Birkbeck, University of London, and a Visiting Fellow at the Center since 2008, has been awarded a European Research Council grant for "the very best creative researchers of any nationality and age." His new project, Coastal Frontiers: Water, Power, and the Boundaries of South Asia, will be undertaken from 2012 to 2017.

Pedro Ramos-Pinto, Research Associate at the Cambridge Centre since 2007, and visiting scholar at the Harvard Center in 2007-2008 and 2009-2010, has been appointed Lecturer in International History at the University of Manchester.

Gabriel Paquette, History and Economics student at the Cambridge Centre in 2001-2002, and Associate Research Fellow at the Cambridge Centre since 2006, and at the Harvard Center since 2008, has been appointed Assistant Professor of History at Johns Hopkins University

Angus Burgin, History and Economics student at the Harvard Center since 2007, and visiting Mellon student at the Cambridge Centre in 2006-07, has been appointed Assistant Professor of History at Johns Hopkins University.

Dr Sunil Amrith, Lecturer in History at Birkbeck College, University of London, was a visitor at the Center from January to May 2010, and will return in spring 2011. Dr Amrith, the author of Decolonizing International Health: India and Southeast Asia, 1930-65 (Palgrave, 2006), works on the history of the Bay of Bengal region since the late eighteenth century, and is currently focusing on the history of migration and cultural circulation between south India and Southeast Asia. His new book, Migration and Diaspora in Modern Asia, will be published in 2011 by Cambridge University Press.

Luca Einaudi visited the Center in March-June 2010, while on leave from his post as senior economist in the Prime Minister's Office, Rome, Italy. He was a Prize Research Student at the Cambridge Centre in 1994/1995, and is the author of Money and Politics: European Monetary Unification and the International Gold Standard (1865-1873)(Oxford, 2001). While at the Center, he worked on the 2007-2009 financial crisis in historical perspective.

Barbara Ravelhofer visited the Center in March-June 2010. She is Reader in English Literature at Durham University and a research associate of the Cambridge Centre. She is the author of The Early Stuart Masque: Dance, Costume, and Music (Oxford, 2006). Her current research is on European Frontiers in Literary Perspective.