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CATEGORIES:CRASSH
SUMMARY:Central European Émigrés at the Oxford Institute o
 f Statistics - Dr Agnes Simon (History)
DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20120229T120000
DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20120229T140000
UID:TALK35765AThttp://talks.cam.ac.uk
URL:http://talks.cam.ac.uk/talk/index/35765
DESCRIPTION:War\, Economics and Politics in the 1940s\n\nDurin
 g the Second World War the Oxford Institute of Sta
 tistics (OIS)\, originally founded in 1935 in an e
 ffort to strengthen Oxford’s credentials as a rese
 arch centre in economics\, became the intellectual
  home of a group of continental economists and soc
 ial scientists. They were all born or originally e
 ducated in German-speaking Central Europe and esca
 ped persecution and the rise of right-wing regimes
  in their home countries. Among them were the foun
 ding director\, Jacob Marschak\, followed by such 
 notable economists as the German F. A. Burchardt\,
  Kurt Mandelbaum\, E. F. Schumacher\, the Austrian
  Josef Steindl\, the Polish Michal Kalecki and the
  Hungarian Thomas Balogh. With their native Britis
 h counterparts drafted into the wartime civil serv
 ice and war effort\, the foreign-born economists r
 esearched the impact of war on the various sectors
  of the economy and planned for post-war economic 
 reconstruction of British and the global economy. 
 They focused on inflation and war finance\, econom
 ic controls and mobilisation of industry and the p
 ost-war shape of the international monetary system
 . They published a collection of essays entitled T
 he Economics of Full Employment  in 1944 that deal
 t with the economic implications of a regime of fu
 ll employment seen as the chief aim in the post-wa
 r world. These activities show that this was a rat
 her unique\, and not very well-known\, episode in 
 the history of refugee academics in Britain. This 
 seminar will look at the membership of the OIS and
  their work while in Oxford in the 1940s in order 
 to give an overview of their understanding of the 
 economic problems facing Britain during and after 
 the war.\n\nThe wartime history of the OIS is part
  of a much larger project which is intending to me
 rge the study of intellectual migration\, that is 
 the research into the movement of intellectuals an
 d academics between countries and the effects of t
 his on their lives and work and on the academic di
 scipline in which they are active\, and the histor
 y of economics as a modern social science discipli
 ne\, together with not just its theoretical develo
 pment but also its professionalisation and institu
 tionalisation. These two broader subjects are conn
 ected by the more specific problem of how biograph
 y might relate to the history of economic thinking
 . Simply put\, the question to be addressed here w
 ill be whether it matters if an economist is an ém
 igré\, and how that immigrant status might change 
 his or her economics\, on the one hand\, and how a
  social science discipline\, in this case economic
 s\, and its history\, institutionalisation and int
 ellectual networks might be crucially influenced b
 y the migration of its practitioners. This researc
 h fits easily into the recent new history of socia
 l sciences that acknowledges the long-term changes
  in the boundaries of academic disciplines\, and a
 lso contributes to such issues as the role of the 
 academic as an expert and commentator in wider soc
 iety and the possible linkages between academic an
 d public discourse.
LOCATION:CRASSH\, Alison Richard Building\, 7 West Road\, C
 ambridge\, CB3 9DT
CONTACT:Ruth Rushworth
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