It’s conference time!
I am excited to announce that the next Asia-Pacific Economic and Business History Conference will be held at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) on the 10-11 February 2023. We welcome proposals for contributions on any topic in economic, social, and business history, including proposals for complete sessions on particular themes. A particular interest is in contributions to the main conference theme: Gender in History. Graduate students are particularly encouraged to attend, with fees for conference attendance and dinner waived with the support of EHSANZ. See the conference website for more.
I will also be running a small workshop the day before the conference (9th February 2023) on Women and Australian business history. This is part of my ARC DECRA project, and will examine women and business history, broadly conceived. Contributions may include women in leadership, women entrepreneurs and small business owners, women in professional work, the representation of ‘corporate’ or ‘business’ women, and the connection between women workers and corporate capitalism. The workshop will adopt an intersectional approach, considering how different forms of privilege and oppression affected the sort of women who engaged in business. The focus will be on women in Australasian business history, but will also consider comparative or international contributions. I have journal special issue planned with contributions from this workshop, and look forward to working with a great range of contributions! Please send submissions directly to me at Claire.Wright@uts.edu.au. Registration can be found here.
Having the two events side by side makes the logistics a little easier on participants, and will allow discussions with those in the mainstream economic and business history field. I’m not aware that the APEBH or EHSANZ has ever had gender as a theme for any of its events or journal issues, and so this is a really important step in broadening the field demographically – both as practitioners and subjects for study. As excellent work by Catherine Bishop, Deb Oxley, Katrina Alford and others have found, there are specifically gendered dimensions of economic relations (including business, leadership and entrepreneurship) that make it a fascinating part of exploring the economic past.
If you are interested in women in economic and business history, I do hope you will join us in Sydney for these events. If you would like more information or to discuss ideas, please get in touch with me here or on twitter.