** Registration is now open for the ABH conference at Queen’s University Belfast on June 20th and 21st 2025.

Please find link ABH 2025 Queen's University Belfast  to register. 

Please note, registration closes on Monday 2nd June. 

Please provide any dietary requirements when completing registration.

A discount on the conference fee is available to ABH members - please go to https://www.theabh.org/ for details of joining the association.

The conference venue is the:

Queen’s Business School,

185 Stranmillis Road,

Belfast,

Northern Ireland,

BT9 5EE

URL: https://www.qub.ac.uk/schools/queens-business-school/

The venue is located a fifteen minute walk from the main University campus.

If you are arriving early on Thursday 19th June, you are welcome to join the Slaven PhD Workshop as an audience member. If you are interested in attending this, please contact the organiser Ian Jones by Thursday 12th June for further details (ian.g.jones@sheffield.ac.uk).

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Deadline extended to Friday 31st January

Call For Papers - DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS 24th January 2025

The Association of Business Historians conference 2025 will be held in Belfast, UK, from 19 to 21 June 2025 and invites submissions to the conference committee on the theme of ‘Business History Applied’.

Applied history, the use of the past to inform understanding of current challenges and support decision making, is a growing field. It is creating an interesting intersection between business history, numerous management disciplines, and areas of practice. Expanding literatures in various fields are examining how the histories of organizations and individuals are used, proactively and implicitly, through mechanisms such as memory, artefacts, rhetoric, and narratives, to contextualize the organization, managers, entrepreneurs, and the environments in which they operate. This sense making is shown to shape routines, practices, and decisions. This is opening exciting collaborative approaches and the development of methodologies to the historical study of organizations and individuals.

Outside the academy, demand for historically informed analysis amongst policy makers, corporate decision makers, and actors in civil society is also growing. Historical reasoning, using analogues, precedents, and long run trends, is important in the development of deeper understanding of contemporary challenges in business and the economy, and has the potential to improve decision making.

Business historians are well-positioned to make significant contributions with this agenda both inside and outside the academy. We invite participants in considering the conference theme to reflect on these opportunities and challenges - We also welcome papers and panels on any aspect of business history and will look to develop a diverse programme for the conference.

How to submit a paper or session proposal

The programme committee will consider both individual papers and entire panels. We are keen to encourage both developmental and mature papers. Individual paper proposals should include a one-page (up to 300-word) abstract with title of the presentation and brief biographical note. Panel proposals should include a cover letter stating the title and rationale for the panel and the name of its contact person; one-page (300-word) abstract and author's CV for each paper; and a list of preferred panel chairs and commentators with contact information. The deadline for submissions is 24th January 2025.

The ABH Conference organiser is Dr Michael Aldous.

The Program Committee intend to send notifications of acceptance as soon as possible once the deadline has passed.

All questions and queries regarding the conference should be directed to Michael Aldous at ABH2025@qub.ac.uk

Queen’s Business School (https://www.qub.ac.uk/schools/queens-business-school/) is part of Queen’s University Belfast. The university has a long tradition supporting business and economic history and the business school is currently home to the Queen’s University Centre for Economic History (https://www.quceh.org.uk/), Centre for Economics, Politics, and History (https://ceph.ie/), and is associated with the Long Run Institute (https://longruninstitute.com/). Belfast is a fascinating city steeped in business and economic history. Its industrial and maritime legacies have left an extensive footprint to explore in the city and wider region. The city is rich in culture and lots of fun. It is well-connected by two international airports.  

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Poster submissions

The conference a welcomes poster proposals from graduate students on all aspects of business history.

Poster presenters will normally be in either the First or Second Year of their PhD.  We also strongly encourage those who have previously presented a poster to submit a paper proposal to the main conference in a subsequent year.

Those wishing to be considered for inclusion in the programme must submit an application to Dr Michael Aldous (ABH2025@qub.ac.uk) by 24th January 2025.  This should provide:

·       Title of your PhD project.

·       An abstract (300 words) that explains the background to the poster; the questions addressed; the sources and methods employed; and likely conclusions.

·       A current CV.

Approved posters must be submitted by 1 June 2025, and a style guide will be circulated to all presenters selected for poster presentations.

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Call for Tony Slaven Doctoral Workshop in Business History, 19 June 2025

The ABH will hold its twelfth annual Tony Slaven Doctoral Workshop on 19 June 2025. This event immediately precedes the ABH Conference, and will take place at Queens Business School, Queen’s University Belfast. Participants in the Workshop are encouraged to attend the ABH Conference following the Workshop. They will also have an opportunity to participate in the Poster Competition (explained in the main call for papers). The Workshop is an excellent opportunity for doctoral students to discuss their work with other research students and established academics in business history in an informal and supportive environment. Students at any stage of their doctoral studies, whether in their first year or very close to submitting, are urged to apply. The workshop provides new researchers with an opportunity to discuss their work with experienced researchers in the discipline, and also includes professional development sessions. The Workshop interprets the term ‘business history’ broadly, and it is intended that students in areas such as (but not confined to) the history of management and organizations, international trade and investment, financial or economic history, agricultural history, the history of not-for- profit organisations, government-industry relations, accounting history, social studies of technology, and historians or management or labour will find it useful. Students undertaking topics with a significant business history element but in disciplines other than economic or business history are also welcome. We embrace students researching any era or region of history.

Each student delivers a 15-minute presentation that is either (depending on how developed your project is) a summary of your PhD prospectus giving an overview of the overarching themes, research questions, and methodologies, or a specific chapter/paper. Time is devoted for discussion of each student’s work and the opportunity to gain feedback from active researchers in the field.

How to Apply for the Tony Slaven Workshop

Your application should be no more than 4 pages sent together in a single computer file: 1) a one-page CV; 2) one page stating the name(s) of the student’s supervisor(s), the title of the theses (a proposed title is fine), the university and department where the student is registered and the date of commencement of thesis registration; 3) an abstract of the work to be presented.

You may apply via email to Dr Michael Aldous at ABH2025@qub.ac.uk. Please use the subject line “Tony Slaven Workshop” and submit by 24 March 2024.

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Coleman Prize 2025

The ABH is pleased to announce that the 2025 Coleman Prize is open to PhD dissertations in Business History (broadly defined) having either a British subject or completed at a British university. All dissertations completed in the previous two calendar years (2023 and 2024) are eligible. In keeping with the ABH’s broad understanding of business history, applications are strongly encouraged from candidates in economic history, social history, labour history, intellectual history, cultural history, environmental history, the history of science and technology, the history of medicine, or any other subfield.

To apply for the Coleman Prize, supervisors are encouraged to nominate recent PhDs. Self-nominations are also strongly welcomed. Please send a PDF including the title of your PhD dissertation and a brief abstract (up to 2 double-spaced pages) to Dr Juan Jose Rivas Moreno at juanjose.rivasmoreno@eui.eu by 14 February 2025. The abstract should make clear the dissertation’s contribution to business history. Longlisted candidates will be requested to submit electronic copies of their dissertations 14 March 2025. Finalists will be notified by 9 May 2025. It is a condition of eligibility for the Prize that finalists will present their findings in-person at the Association’s annual conference.

In a new special series hosted by the New Books Network, Bernardo Bátiz-Lazo is interviewing prior Coleman Prize winners on their dissertations, some of which have already been published as monographs. More information on these interviews can be found at the link here: https://www.theabh.org/news/2023/8/22/coleman-prize-series-winners-podcast-by-bernardo-btiz-lazo

The Programme for the 2023 ABH Conference is now available here

Recommended accommodation can be found here under the “contact tab” of the Northumbria website, while the full program can also be found under the “more info” tab.

Call for Papers:

Slaven Doctoral Workshop

Coleman Prize for the best PhD Dissertation

2023 Annual Conference

Pushing the Boundaries: Business History beyond the Discipline.

Keynote Speaker: Professor Andrew Popp (Copenhagen Business School)

29 June - 1 July 2023

Newcastle Business School,

Northumbria University Newcastle.

In the 2020s, business history remains ‘in an inventive mood, bursting with multiple futures and paths forward’ (Kipping et al., 2016; 19). Having moved on from the 20th century preoccupation with large corporations, business historians now engage with a multiplicity of themes and topics. While the discipline has yet to make a significant impact on the curricula of most business schools, and few schools of history teach the subject, judged from the perspective of the high ranking of its major journals business history has established a highly credible position across the social sciences and humanities. On the other hand, many have questioned whether the discipline has adapted sufficiently to what remains a highly challenging environment for business historians (Scranton and Fridenson, 2013; Wilson et al., 2022). Are we merely preaching to ourselves? Have we engaged with society’s biggest issues, and thereby limited the opportunities of influencing practice in an effective way? Is the preoccupation with the USA, Europe and Japan restricting our understanding of the many paths taken by business in other socio-cultural and political contexts?

In searching for answers to these questions, the conference will assess the extent to which the discipline ought to be more ambitious in developing its research agendas. This builds effectively on the themes of last year’s ABH conference at Strathclyde, when we debated the theme of ‘Turning points and persistent problems’. Crucially, we need to change the attitudes of senior university managers to the subject by demonstrating its considerable relevance to students’ intellectual development, as well as influencing the worlds of practice that rarely consider historical perspectives. Although this will provide business historians with major challenges, achieving these aims will generate much greater credibility and offer rich opportunities for the discipline. Above all, we want the discipline to have a wider impact, whether this be on other disciplines or the various worlds of practice, thereby extending the barriers that have limited business history’s potential to influence the world around us.

What are the areas into which business historians might delve?

- The Worlds of Practice: In recognition of the ways in which ‘uses of the past’ have infiltrated disciplines such as strategy, corporate identity and human resource management, we need to investigate how business historians can work more extensively with practitioners, whether they be policy-makers, corporate executives or archivists. As impact is such an important issue, especially in the UK, business history must respond to the challenge.

- Emerging Markets: we agree with Friedman and Jones (2017; p. 455), who strongly encourage business historians to engage in research projects that encompass economies outside the United States, Western Europe and Japan; ‘the future of business history rests in part on recognizing the centrality of this alternative business history, rather than treating the business history of Africa, Asia, and Latin America as tangential to the central themes of the discipline’. Scranton (2019, 2020) has already made this move, putting into practice what he and Fridenson (2013) noted in Reimagining Business History.

- Sustainability: while Jones and Lubinski (2014; p. 18) made a strenuous appeal for business historians to analyse ‘why some firms become “greener” than others’, apart from the work of Bergquist (2017) and of Jones (2022), relatively little effort has been made to develop this theme and assess the wide sustainability agenda and corporate responses. The forthcoming book by Jones (2022) will no doubt stimulate much wider interest in the role business has played in accommodating the environmental agenda into corporate strategy and performance, focusing especially on the term ‘deep responsibility’.

- Corporate Ethics and Corporate Governance: while there has been extensive work done in these fields, given the extent of corporate misbehaviour and violations of corporate codes it is vital that business historians participate in these debates. For example, the British Academy’s Future of the Corporation project (2021) would benefit from greater historical insights into context and behaviour.

- Gender and Race: again, while the literature on women and racial issues in business have expanded over the course of the last thirty years, these remain significant areas for investigation because of the way they open up our understanding of how business and society interact. This would also link with the decolonization agenda that is now sweeping the world. One might also add that masculinity is another neglected area of study; even though sociologists have written extensively about ‘hegemonic masculinity’ (Connell & Wood, 2005), the business history literature has failed to assess how this influenced the achievement and execution of power.

- Social Science Theory: Following the ‘historic turn’ in organization studies (Clark and Rowlinson, 2004) and the recent surge in interest amongst strategy and international business scholars in the incorporation of historical analysis into research agendas (Perchard et al., 2017), a substantial debate has been occupying a lot of space in prominent journals. Although the methodological issues arising from this work have yet to be resolved, it is essential to assess how business historians can engage with theoretical concepts when conducting research.

Needless to say, there could well be other agendas that need to be incorporated into the ambit of business history, an issue that will no doubt be raised at the conference. The key issue here is finding a place for business history in debating the ‘Big Issues’ that face society, applying our skills and knowledge to finding solutions that are both effective and sustainable. By pursuing this strategy, we might better engage with both the worlds of practice and senior university managers, demonstrating our credibility and relevance to the major debates of our time.

Sources:

British Academy (2021), Future of the Corporation, British Academy.

Clark, P., & Rowlinson, M. (2004). The treatment of history in organization studies: Towards an ‘historic turn’? Business History, 46(3), 331–352.

Connell, R.W., & Wood, J. (2005). Globalization and business masculinities. Men and Masculinities, 7(4), 347–364.

Friedman, W.A. and Jones, G. (2017). Time for debate. Business History Review, 85 (Spring), pp.1-8.

Jones, G. (2022). The Search for the Deep Responsibility of Business. Boston, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Jones, G. & Lubinski, C. (2014). Making ‘Green Giants’: Environment sustainability in the German chemical industry, 1950s–1980s, Business History, 56(4), pp.1-14.

Kipping, M., Kurosawa, T., & Wadhwani, R. D. (2016). A revisionist historiography of business history: a richer past for a richer future. In J.F. Wilson, S. Toms, A. de Jong, & E. Buchnea (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Business History (pp. 19–35). Routledge.

Perchard, A., MacKenzie, N.G., Decker, S., & Favero, G. (2017). Clio in the business school: Historical approaches in strategy, international business and entrepreneurship. Business History, 59(6), 904–927.

Scranton, P., & Fridenson, P. (2013). Reimagining Business History. Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press.

Scranton, P. (2019). Fixing holes in the plan: Maintenance and repair in Poland, 1945–1970. Enterprise et Histoire. 103, pp.54-72.

Scranton, P. (2020). Collaboration, coordination, cooperation and subversive entrepreneurship in Socialist Hungary’, paper given to the Business History Conference.

Wilson, John F. Ian G. Jones, Steven Toms, Anna Tilba, Emily Buchnea and Nicholas Wong (2022), Business History. A Research Overview, Routledge, pp.148.

How to submit a paper or session proposal

The programme committee will consider both individual papers and entire panels. We are keen to encourage both developmental and mature papers. Individual paper proposals should include a one-page (up to 300-word) abstract and brief biographical note. Panel proposals should include a cover letter stating the rationale for the panel and the name of its contact person; one-page (300-word) abstract and author's CV for each paper; and a list of preferred panel chairs and commentators with contact information. The deadline for submissions is 27 January 2023. Please use the conference e-mail address (below) to submit proposals.

Poster submissions

The ABH also welcomes poster proposals from graduate students on all aspects of business history covering a wide range of periods and countries.

Poster presenters will normally be in either the First or Second Year of their PhD.  We also strongly encourage those who have previously presented a poster will submit a paper proposal to the main conference in a subsequent year.

Those wishing to be considered for inclusion in the programme must submit an application by 27 January 2023.  This should provide:

• Title of your PhD project.

• An abstract (300 words).*

• A current CV.

*The abstract should explain the background to the poster; the questions addressed; the sources and methods employed; and likely conclusions.

Approved posters must be submitted by 1 June 2023.

If you have any questions, please contact the Conference Organisers via:

bl.abh.conference@northumbria.ac.uk

Call for Tony Slaven Doctoral Workshop in Business History, 29 June 2023

The ABH will hold its tenth annual Tony Slaven Doctoral Workshop on 29 June 2023. This event immediately precedes the 2023 ABH Annual Conference at Newcastle Business School, Northumbria University. Participants in the Workshop are encouraged to attend the main ABH Annual Conference following the Workshop. They will also have an opportunity to participate in the Poster Competition (explained in the main call for papers). The Workshop is an excellent opportunity for doctoral students to discuss their work with other research students and established academics in business history in an informal and supportive environment. It is important to note that this will not be a hybrid event and all participants need to attend the workshop in person. Students at any stage of their doctoral studies, whether in their first year or very close to submitting, are urged to apply. In addition to providing new researchers with an opportunity to discuss their work with experienced researchers in the discipline, the Workshop will also include at least one skill-related session. The Workshop interprets the term ‘business history’ broadly, and it is intended that students in areas such as (but not confined to) the history of management and organizations, international trade and investment, financial or economic history, agricultural history, the history of not-for- profit organisations, government-industry relations, accounting history, social studies of technology, and historians or management or labour will find it useful. Students undertaking topics with a significant business history element but in disciplines other than economic or business history are also welcome. We embrace students researching any era or region of history. Skills sessions are typically led by regular ABH members; in the past these have included ‘getting published’, ‘using historical sources’, and ‘preparing for your viva examination’ sessions. There will be ample time for discussion of each student’s work and the opportunity to gain feedback from active researchers in the field.

How to Apply for the Tony Slaven Workshop

Your application should be no more than 4 pages sent together in a single computer file: 1) a one-page CV; 2) one page stating the name(s) of the student’s supervisor(s), the title of the theses (a proposed title is fine), the university and department where the student is registered and the date of commencement of thesis registration; 3) an abstract of the work to be presented.

If selected for the workshop, you will be asked to prepare a 15-minute presentation that is either a summary of your PhD project (giving an overview of the overarching themes, research questions, and methodologies) or a chapter/paper.

You may apply via email to Dr Michael Aldous at m.aldous@qub.ac.uk. Please use the subject line “Tony Slaven Workshop” and submit by 24 March 2023

Call for Coleman Prize for Best PhD Dissertation, Newcastle Business School, Northumbria University, 30 June-1 July 2023

Named in honour of the British business historian Donald Coleman (1920-1995), this prize is awarded annually by the Association of Business Historians to recognise excellence in new research in Britain. It is open to PhD dissertations in Business History (broadly defined) either having a British subject or completed at a British university. All dissertations completed in the previous year (2022) to that of the Prize are eligible. In keeping with the ABH’s broad understanding of business history, applications are strongly encouraged from candidates in economic history, social history, labour history, intellectual history, cultural history, environmental history, the history of science and technology, the history of medicine, or any other subfield. The value of the prize is £500, sponsored by the Taylor & Francis Group, a scholarly publisher. To be eligible for the Prize, finalists must present their findings in person at the Association’s annual conference, held on 29th June-1st July 2023. A complete list of previous winners may be found here

How to Apply for the Coleman Prize

Supervisors are encouraged to nominate recent PhDs, and self-nominations are also strongly welcomed. Please send a PDF including the title of your PhD dissertation and a brief abstract (up to 2 double-spaced pages) to christine.leslie@glasgow.ac.uk by 24 February 2023. Shortlisted candidates will be requested to submit electronic copies of their theses 17 March 2023. Finalists will be notified by 14 April 2023.

Everyone appearing on the programme must register for the meeting. PhD students whose papers are accepted for the meeting may apply for funds to partially defray their travel costs by applying to the Francesca Carnevali Travel Grant for PhD Students. A limited number of scholarships are available from the Francesca Carnevali fund of the ABH to contribute towards the travel, accommodation and registration costs of students doing a PhD in the United Kingdom, who are presenting in the Slaven Workshop, the ABH conference or the Coleman Prize.

Further details can be found here