​Welcome to Queen's University Centre for Economic History

Queen's University Centre for Economic History (QUCEH) is an interdisciplinary research centre based at Queen's University Belfast. It brings together faculty and graduate students working on the economic study of the past from across the university and elsewhere.
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News

Economic History Society Annual Conference 2019
​QUCEH is hosting this next EHS conference. For more details, see the EHS website.
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New QUCEH Members
​QUCEH welcomes Alexandra de Pleijt, Philip Fliers, Frank Kennedy and Robin Adams as new QUCEH Research Associates. Alexandra joins us from Oxford, and is a Lecturer in Economics. Philip joins us from Utrecht, Robin from Oxford and Frank from LSE; all three are Postdocforal Research Fellows. You can find out more about them here.
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History Now
​History Now is a history talk show presented by Barry Sheppard and produced by local Belfast television station Northern Visions Television. In each episode, Barry brings together a group of academic or professional historians to discuss a topic in Irish history. QUCEH members have featured in a number of episodes.
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The Long Run Initiative
​The Long Run Initiative is a not-for-profit forum co-run by members of QUCEH. The Initiative is founded on three precepts: (1) to demonstrate the practical value of historical expertise to contemporary decision makers; (2) to create dialogue between academics, businesses and government; and (3) to provide an independent and international perspective on the challenges facing business and society. Find out more here.

An Economist's Guide
Matthias Blum and Chris Colvin's new edited volume is now available for sale in advance of release in November 2018. The book aims to introduce the field of economic history to economists. With 49 contributors and 50 chapters, it will showcase cutting-edge research and pedagogy from our field. Our book launch event will take place on 18 January 2019. More details about the book are available here.
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QUCEH Director John Turner at recent QUCEH Economic History Impact Initiative event at Riddel Hall

QUCEH Seminar Schedule
Our seminar schedule for the first semester of 2018-2019 is now available here. As in previous years, we meet on Fridays at 1.30PM. Note, however, a change in venue: seminars now take place in the Lecture Theatre of Riddel Hall's Teaching Block.
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QUCEH Research News

• A new article by Martin Quinn and co-authors reports on the results of a content analysis of the corporate disclosures of two Irish breweries with significant family ownership stakes (Guinness and Murphy's) from 1950 to 1972.
• New research by Alan Fernihough and Cormac Ó Gráda re-examines the link between demographic pressure and economic conditions in pre-Famine Ireland using hand-collected highly-disaggregated parish-level data.
• QUCEH Research Student Stephen Billington's new working paper looks at patenting behaviour during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars to discern the impact of warfare in innovation.
• Recent QUCEH graduate Nikita Lychakov's new working paper on the role of the state in the last financial crisis of Imperial Russia exploits novel data on interlocking directorates between the Russian state and the banking sector.
• QUCEH Research Student Stephen Billington's new working paper on patents and the Industrial Revolution uses the entire population of patents granted in the UK prior to 1852 to look at inventors' incentives.
• Graeme G. Acheson,Gareth Campbell, Áine Gallagher and John D. Turner's new working paper exploits a new dataset of 500,000 shareholders in the largest nineteenth-century British railways, and makes a surprising finding: women were not heavily influenced by male associates.
• Alan de Bromhead, Alan Fernihough and Enda Hargaden examine the relationship between the franchise extension and the results of the 1918 election in Ireland in a new QUCEH working paper.
• Using a new banking biography for Ireland, Seán Kenny and John D. Turner investigate the political roots of banking instability between 1797 and 1826 in a new QUCEH working paper.
• In a joint project with Alan Hanna, QUCEH PhD Researcher Stephen Billington has a new QUCEH working paper on the impact of the way patents are being classified in empirical research. They apply their new machine learning classification to historical patenting data for the Industrial Revolution.

More research by QUCEH members
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