Anne Laurence’s Statement as candidate for the Presidency of the Economic History Society

The Society as a whole faces important challenges and the president necessarily plays a significant role in negotiations over

  • Open access. Although the arrangements are more or less set, the consequences for researchers and for the future of the Review are still uncertain. The Society needs to be assured that the Review will remain a world-leading publication in economic and social history and that it produces enough income to support the Society’s activities. This will influence the next round of negotiations with Wiley. The future of the monograph may also come under further scrutiny and the Society needs to maintain its commitment to the three current series it sponsors or co-sponsors.
  • REF 2020. The Society played a role in the last REF to ensure that there was sufficient expertise on the History panel in economic and social history and that the Economics panel had a historian member. The next panel will be recruited during the term of office of the incoming president and the Society should make a comparable contribution to the preparations. The Society is a very important channel of communication between HEFCE and members who will be involved in their own institutions’ preparations to enable researchers better to understand the process, especially in regard to impact. Co-operation with other learned societies is an important element in this.
  • It is probable that public funding for research will diminish. The Society has for many years met the ESRC and AHRC to discuss the funding of research in economic and social history. These meetings are now larger and involve more learned societies. This is an important part of the Society’s service to members.
  • The new government is also unlikely to do much for university funding. The Society has played an increasingly important role in providing opportunities for new researchers both in the form of prizes and in the annually-awarded post-doctoral fellowships.
  • The recent Royal Historical Society survey of historians has revealed that only 20 per cent of professors of History are women; in Economics it is only 11 per cent. The work that the Women’s Committee is doing for younger researchers is excellent, but there is more to be done to help women make progress later in their careers: the gender balance of recruitment to the profession (at least in History departments) is now much more equal, but women are still under-represented in promotions.
  • In the light of the uncertainty about the Society’s future income, the Society should husband its resources but ensure that it continues to meet its charitable aims.

These British concerns should not detract from the fact that the Society (as evidenced by contributions to the Review and to the annual conference) is becoming increasingly international, to everyone’s benefit.

If elected president I would like to explore:

  • Making closer contacts with the Irish and Scottish societies for economic and social history. We have many common interests, especially in relation to archives. Different funding regimes and the possible effects of further devolution in Scotland will have an effect upon the ways in which the resources upon which we all rely are made available. I would like to propose holding a symposium of historians from the four nations, especially those representing the Economic and Social History Society of Scotland and the Economic and Social History Society of Ireland, to explore matters of common interest both of subject matter and of institutional support.
  • The Society has an excellent record in supporting new researchers with prizes, fellowships and occasional grants. We should explore the possibility of a mid-career fellowship. A good many universities, especially those established after 1992, do not have sabbatical schemes. It is becoming much harder for historians, especially if they have taken on roles such as head of department, admissions officer, graduate student officer etc, to set up a new project to the point that they can apply for external funding. There are obviously legal complexities that would need to be sorted out and the Society could not commit itself to a full economic costed fellowship but, rather, one on the lines of the Leverhulme fellowships.

Finally, as a candidate for the presidency I differ in two important respects from most previous presidents:

  • Only three women in the 90-year history of the Society have held the presidency.
  • Presidents have largely been recruited from Russell Group universities. My institution, the Open University, was founded in 1969 and is aligned with the Robbins Universities for research but its undergraduate teaching mission—particularly its commitment to open, part-time and distance learning—corresponds more with the post 1992 universities. It does, however, take post-graduates on the same basis as conventional universities and is part of the AHRC doctoral training scheme.

Service to the Economic History Society

2014-presentChair of panel of judges for first monograph prize

2013-14Representative of Economic History Society on Social History Society Committee

2013Author of submission to the Office of National Statistics on the future of the census, on behalf of the Economic History Society, The Royal Historical Society and the Social History Society

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2012, 2010, 2008Member of panel of judges for first monograph prize

2008-14Elected member of Council

2015, 2013, 2012, 2010, 2009, 2007, 2006Judge for conference new researchers’ sessions

2002, 2006Organiser of Women’s Committee Workshops 2002, with Pam Sharpe on European Families, Relationships and Money in Historical Perspective, Institute of Historical Research, supported by a grant of £1300 from the British Academy to bring speakers from abroad; 2006 with Katrina Honeyman on Women and Business, Leeds University

2002-8Chair of the Women’s Committee and ex-officio member of Council and executive

1998-2001Co-opted member of Council as representative of the Social History Society

Curriculum Vitae: Professor Anne Laurence

Career

2003-presentProfessor of History, Department of History, the Open University

2008-12Head of the Department of History (30 members of staff)

2007Visiting professor at Department of History, Adelaide University, Australia 3 months

1993-2003Senior lecturer in History, the Open University

1998-2001Sub-dean curriculum development, Arts Faculty. Responsible for new curriculum development and for relations with the BBC (with whom the faculty spent £1 million p.a. on course-related broadcasting)

1976-1993Lecturer in History, the Open University

1995, 1996Month long visiting fellowships at the Huntington Library, San Marino, California

1972-5DPhil student University of Oxford Faculty of Modern History

1971-2Research assistant on the History of Oxford University project (and also, part-time, 1975-6)

Qualifications

1981D.Phil (Modern History: thesis ‘Parliamentary Army Chaplains 1642-51’), University of Oxford

1971BA (Hons) class II(i), History & Politics, University of York

Teaching

At the Open University I have written and planned distance teaching materials for students at all levels on early modern Europe, and on 19th and 20th century Ireland. These have been in the form of written tutorials, audio-visual and on-line materials. I have made more than 20 TV programmes either for transmission or, nowadays, for distribution by DVD or streaming. I have developed on-line materials to teach students how to use spreadsheets. Latterly I have been particularly concerned to teach the history of the four nations of Britain and Ireland and to persuade students that counting and measuring are appropriate skills for the historian and materially add to our understanding of the past. I have also chaired the teams that develop these materials over a period of three years in preparation for using the materials for 10 years.

I have supervised 5 PhDs, been internal examiner for 3 PhDs and external examiner for PhDs at Universities of Warwick, Northumbria, York, Aberystwyth, Oxford, East Anglia, West of England, UCL, Melbourne (Australia), Maynooth (Ireland).

Other relevant experience

2012-3External REF assessor for proposed History submissions for Plymouth University, Glasgow Caledonian University and the University of the Highlands and Islands

2012-14Member of AHRC panels (peer review fellowships panel 2012, 2013; moderation panel research grants 2012, 2014)

2010-presentMember of ESRC Peer Review College

2010-15One of two academic members of the National Archives User Advisory Group (keeping the learned societies informed of developments at the archives)

2010-presentAcademic reviewer or chair of validation panels for institutions whose qualifications are validated by the Open University (Hull College, Harrogate College, Craven College Skipton, Somerset College of Arts and Technology, Ruskin College Oxford)

2008-11External examiner University of York History BA

2008Elected academician (now fellow) of the Academy of Social Sciences

2005-2014Member of AHRC Peer Review College (and strategic reviewer 2010-present)

2005-08Member of panel of judges for Women’s History Network first monograph prize

2005External reviewer for Oxford University Department of Continuing Education period review of History and Art History courses

2004-presentMember of editorial board of Women’s History Review

2004-8External examiner Northumbria University History BA and MA

2000-6Academic adviser for 5 BBC-Open University TV series for general transmission on BBC2 and BBC4

1996-2001Treasurer of the Social History Society and member of the society’s committee and executive. Chair of meeting between Economic History Society and Social History Society with ESRC and AHRC 2000

1990Elected fellow of the Royal Historical Society

1988-1993One of three editors of journal Bunyan Studies

1983-91External examiner University of East Asia

1986-9Conference secretary British Association of Irish Studies

Peer reviewer for:Economic History Review; Women’s History Review; Gender and History; Journal of British Studies; Journal of the History of Sexuality; Financial History Review; Accounting, Business and Financial History; Architectural History

Reviewer of academic book proposals for Palgrave Macmillan, Boydell and Brewer, Oxford University Press, Routledge

Assessor for chairs in History at Leeds University and Queen’s University Belfast

Relevant Publications

A. Laurence (2010), ‘Lady Betty Hastings (1682-1739): godly patron’, Women’s History Review 19 (2), pp.201-213

A. Laurence, J. Maltby and J. Rutterford (eds.) (2009), Women and their Money 1700-1950: Essays on Women and Finance, London: Routledge International Studies in Business History, xvii+ pp.309, joint author of introduction with other editors and author of A. Laurence, ‘Women, banks and the securities market in early eighteenth century England’, pp.46-58

A. Laurence (2009), ‘Using buildings to understand social history: Britain and Ireland in the seventeenth century’ in K. Harvey (ed.), History and Material Culture, London: Routledge, pp.103-122

A. Laurence (2009), ‘Les femmes et la transmission de la propriété. L’héritage dans les îles Britanniques au XVIIe siècle’, XVIIe Siècle 244, pp.435-50

A. Laurence (2008), ‘The emergence of a private clientèle for banks: Hoare’s Bank and some early women customers’, Economic History Review 61(3), pp.565-86

A. Laurence (2008), ‘Real and imagined communities in the lives of women in seventeenth-century Ireland: identity and gender’ in S. Tarbin and S. Broomhall (eds.), Women, Identities and Communities in Early Modern Europe, Aldershot: Ashgate, pp.13-27

A. Laurence (2006), 'Women investors, 'that nasty South Sea affair' and the rage to speculate in early eighteenth-century England', Accounting, Business and Financial History 16 (2), pp.245-264. Winner of the Basil Yamey prize.

A. Laurence (2006), ‘Lady Betty Hastings, her half-sisters and the South Sea Bubble: family fortunes and strategies’, Women’s History Review 15, pp.533-540

A. Laurence (2004), ‘Women in the British Isles in the sixteenth century’ in R. Tittler and N. Jones (eds.), A Companion to Tudor Britain, Oxford: Blackwell, pp.381-399

A. Laurence (2003), ‘Women using building in seventeenth-century England: a question of sources?’,Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 6th series 13, pp.293-304

A. Laurence (2003), ‘Space, status and gender in English topographical paintings c.1660-c.1740’, Architectural History 46, pp.81-94

J. Bellamy, A. Laurence and G. Perry (eds.) (2000), Women, Scholarship and Criticism: Gender and Knowledge c.1790-1900, Manchester: Manchester University Press, xi+ pp.250. Co-author of introduction and author of ‘Women historians and documentary research: Lucy Aikin, Agnes Strickland, Mary Anne Everett Green, and Lucy Toulmin Smith’ pp.125-141

A. Laurence (1994), ‘How free were English women in the seventeenth century?’ in E. Kloek, N. Teeuwen, M. Huisman (eds.), Women in the Golden Age: An International Debate on Women in Seventeenth Century Holland, England and Italy, Hilversum: Veloren, pp.127-135

A. Laurence (1994), Women in England 1500-1760: a Social History, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, xvi+ pp.301. Reprinted 1996, 2002; e-book 2013

A. Laurence (1990), Parliamentary Army Chaplains 1642-51, Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, Royal Historical Society Studies in History 59, pp.199

A. Laurence (1988), ‘Cradle to the grave: English observations of Irish social customs in the seventeenth century’, The Seventeenth Century III, pp.63-84

A. Laurence (1982), ‘Women's work in the English civil war’, History Today, pp.20-25

Research interests

Investors in the early stock market; women, land and wealth 1550-1750; women, the law and social structures in Britain and Ireland 1550-1750; women historians c.1820-c.1914.