Organisers: Marcus Meer (UCL) and Gabriele Passabi (GHIL)

Venue: GHIL

Experiences of instability and inequality spark lively debates on current economic models. In response, alternative (and supposedly more moral) economies of the past have entered the view once more. How societies of the past negotiated and structured the relationship between morality and economy has been influentially explored by E. P. Thompson (1971), among others. But the stories historians tell of the past and its economies may themselves have an impact on the political economies of today and tomorrow as well (Lenel & Nützenadel, 2023). How pre-modern societies brought about their economic orders, whether ‘moral’ or ‘rational’, by means of history as a medium of economic thought and practice, however, has so far largely escaped scholarly scrutiny.

Pre-modern studies are particularly well placed to contribute to these debates, as the organisers’ own project on the later Middle Ages demonstrates, which focuses on monetary information in institutional chronicles (monasteries, cities, courts) and their practical, normative, and formative prospects. This conference invites contributions on all communicative processes through which pre-modern communities—urban, noble, monastic, ecclesiastical or otherwise—used the past to address present challenges and future aspirations in economic terms, broadly understood. All media that remembered, recorded, or transmitted knowledge about the past are welcome. The scope is therefore explicitly not limited to written sources, such as historiographical or autobiographical records, legal compilations, administrative records, or scholarly treatises. We also welcome considerations of material and visual sources, such as images, artefacts, buildings and rituals and practices that referred to economic aspects of the past.

Possible themes to be explored include, but are not limited to:

• considerations of money (including coinage, prices, taxation, debt, gifts, alms etc.) and economic exchange in pre-modern memory cultures

• normative contemplation of moral economies and the communication of economic norms with reference to the past 

• narratives of the economic past as sources for historically grounded legitimacy to justify, criticise, or reframe the authority of certain groups

• memories of economic crises (e.g. famine, war, inflation) and successes (abundance, recovery, growth etc.) for institutional or personal identity

• rhetorics of numeracy, quantification, and their persuasive force of exactness

• interactions between processes of economic record-keeping and institutional decision-making

• comparative approaches to regional, cross-cultural, and gendered modes of remembering the pre-modern economy

• material and visual cultures of remembering economic aspects of the past

We particularly welcome comparative and interdisciplinary approaches from history, art history, archaeology, literary studies, manuscript studies, religious studies, legal history, economic history, and related fields. Contributions may focus on Europe and the wider ancient/medieval/early modern world or explore cross-cultural connections in the pre-modern era.

Please submit an abstract of 250–300 words for a 20-minute presentation alongside a short biographical note of 100 words by 20 December 2026 to Gabriele Passabi (g.passabi[at]ghil.ac.uk). Please also indicate if you would be interested in contributing to the proceedings. For further information, please contact Marcus Meer (m.meer[at]ghil.ac.uk).