Projects
Our researchers participate in various national and international interdiscipinary projects and research networks:
Politics of the English Grain Trade, 1314-1815
The English Grain Trade project questions how both cultural and economic history are intertwined with this essential good by examining how grain became commodified in the 14th to the 19th centuries. By focusing on aspects such as milling, bread production, and the rise of grain-trading centres in the Baltic and North Sea regions, the project takes a broad scope in examining where, and how, people obtained their daily bread.
Researchers: Mike Braddick, Jessica Dijkman (ESH), Matthias Berlandi (ESH), Mabel Winter
Duration: 2022-2027
Funding: AHRCRace to the Bottom? Family labour, household livelihood and consumption in the relocation of textile production between ca. 1780 and 1990
Using a mix of qualitative and quantitative research, Race to the Bottom attempts to map the geographic shift of textile production in the last 250 years on a “micro”-level by looking at the household. To what extent has the often gendered work of handicraft textile production driven labour division within households across time, and how has it affected global textile consumption and production patterns?
Researchers: Elise van Nederveen-Meerkerk, Corinne Boter, Sarah Carmichael, Aditi Dixit (PhD), Kate Frederick
Duration: 2018-2023
Funding: ERC Consolidator GrantSCOOP: Sustainable Cooperation
Our SCOOP-researchers examine how environmentally sustainable cooperation efforts act as a key element of resilient, future-proof institutions using an interdisciplinary joint research strategy. The project is focused on creating research-driven roadmaps for the improvement of social resilience; SCOOP provides policy advice for governments on this subjects of health care, work environments, and social integration.
Project Leader: Rafael Wittek (University of Groningen), Bas van Bavel, Naomi Ellemers (Psychology), Martin van Hees (VU), Tanja van der Lippe (Sociology) and Russell Spears (University of Groningen). Participants ESH: Corinne Boter, Selin Dilli, Kate Frederick, Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk, Maanik Nath
Duration: 2016 - ongoing
Funding: Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and ScienceSubprojects SCOOP
We have several PhDs writing dissertations within the framework of the SCOOP programme. The overall theme is sustainable cooperation but within that the PhDs focus on very different topics:
Silke Baas: Gender occupational segmentation and stereotyping of medical specializations
Claudia Hacke: Family firms and gender equality in the Netherlands
Aaron Roberts: Cooperation, Cooperatives and Development
Chris Vlam: The Associative Order in the Netherlands
CLARIAH: Common Lab Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities.
A repository of both data and tools to aid researchers in the (digital) humanities and social sciences, CLARIAH is a resource platform made to collect data for use by researchers and simplify research tasks by offering tools for large data analysis. CLARIAH has a wide range of data available across a variety of fields and integrates well with existing tools such as Delpher. Utrecht’s Social and Economic history department has assisted in making socio-economic data and tools for analysis available to the project.
Associated ESH Researchers: Auke Rijpma
Funding: NOWCLIO-INFRA
The Economic and Social History department at Utrecht has been one of the main partners of the CLIO-INFRA database project, a repository of data concerning worldwide economic indicators across the last 200 years. CLIO-INFRA’s freely available datasets provide researchers with key insights into long-term developments in social inequality and economic progress, on levels ranging from the local to the (inter-)national.
Associated ESH researchers: Jan van Luiten-van Zanden (project lead), Auke Rijpma, Rene van Weeren
Funding: NWOAfrican Economic History Network
Focused on the study of the long-term development of sub-Saharan Africa, from the pre-colonial era to the present-day, the AEHN initiative publishes both working papers and open-source articles and books on the subject. In addition, they have made several databases on sub-Saharan Africa available. A number of our ESH researchers, as well as other Utrecht academics, contribute to the network’s initiatives.
Associated ESH researchers: Felix Meier zu Selhausen
Funding: Sveriges Riksbank and ERCThe Cape of Good Hope Panel
This project aims to transcribe and digitise the tax and population records of the 17th-19th century colonial administrations in the Cape Colony. By using this tax information and cross-collating it with other sources such as inventories, auction records, and genealogical records, the project aims to come to a more complete understanding of the economic and social network relations in the Cape Colony for not only the settler population, but for enslaved people and indigenous Africans as well.
Associated ESH researchers: Auke Rijpma
Funding: Sveriges Riksbank