Professor Sheilagh Ogilvie | All Souls College

My research explores how social institutions – the formal and informal constraints on economic activity – shaped economic development in Europe between the Middle Ages and the present day. In recent years my publications have analysed guilds, serfdom, communities, the family, gender, human capital investment, consumption, and state capacity.

Personal page

Background

Chichele Professor of Economic History, University of Oxford (from 2020)
University Academic Fellow, All Souls College, Oxford (from 2020)
University Assistant Lecturer (1989-1992); University Lecturer (1992-1999); Reader in Economic History (1999-2004); then Professor of Economic History (2004-2020), Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge
Research Fellow, Trinity College, Cambridge (from 1984 to 1988)
Postgraduate, University of Chicago (1992)
Postgraduate, University of Cambridge (1985)
Undergraduate, University of St Andrews (1979)

Research Interests

Economic history; institutions; economic growth; epidemics; human capital; state capacity; demography; gender; guilds; serfdom; merchant associations; consumption; central and eastern Europe

Selected publications

Other professional memberships and roles

Fellow of the British Academy
Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences
Research Fellow, Centre for Economic Policy Research
Fellow of the Collegium Carolinum
Fellow of CESifo
Editor, Bohemia
Editorial Board, Journal of Economic History
Editorial board, Research in Economics
Editorial board, Historická Demografie
Editorial board, Paginae historiae
Academic Advisory Board, WINIR
International Advisory Board, Institute of Ethnology, Czech Academy of Sciences
Board of Trustees, Economic History Association
Scientific Committee, Datini Institute
Advisory Board, Network for History in the Humanities and Social Sciences
Advisory Board, CAGE, University of Warwick
Advisory Board, Gender and Work Project, University of Uppsala

Teaching

Note: the following courses will be paused for 2024-7 due to the award of a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship, but will resume in Michaelmas 2027.

Convenor of the M.Sc. and M.Phil. degrees in Economic and Social History
Coordinator of M.Phil. Core Course 'What Happened and Why'
Advanced Paper on 'Institutions and Economic Growth in Historical Perspective'
I am happy to supervise Ph.D. students working on my research interests

Research awards and grants

Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship: Serfdom and Economic Growth, c. 1000 - 1861
Gyorgi Ranki Prize for book, The European Guilds: An Economic Analysis (2021)
British Academy Wolfson Trust Research Professorship: Human Capital and Economic Outcomes in a European Developing Economy, c.1600-c.1900 (from 2013 to 2016).
ESRC Major Research Grant: Human Well-Being and the 'Industrious Revolution': Consumption, Gender and Social Capital in a German Developing Economy, 1600- 1900 (from 2008 to 2012).
British Academy Research Grant: Economic Structures in Early Modern Central Europe: The Czech Lands in the Seventeenth Century (from 2010 to 2011).
Dame Elizabeth Hill Fund: The Czech Lands in the Seventeenth Century (from 2010 to 2011).
Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship: Social Capital and History (from 2008 to 2010).
Stanley Z. Pech Prize for article, "'So That Every Subject Knows How to Behave': Social Disciplining in Early Modern Bohemia" (2008).
Leverhulme Major Research Grant: Economy, Gender and Social Capital in the German Demographic Transition (from 2005 to 2007).
René Kuczynski Prize for book, A Bitter Living: Women, Markets and Social Capital in Early Modern Germany (2004).
Anton Gindely Prize for Research Project on "Social Structures in Bohemia, 1500-1800" (2004).
British Academy Research Readership: Social Structures in Bohemia, 1500-1700 (from 2000 to 2004).
Gyorgy Ranki Prize for book, State Corporatism and Proto-Industry (1999).
Volkswagen Foundation Project Grant: Soziale Strukturen im frühmodernen Böhmen (from 1997 to 2000).