Education et santé avant 1800

Early Developments of Health and Education: Global and RegionaL Perspectives on the Pre-1800 Evidence

Call for papers

Barcelona, NWO-ClioInfra Workshop, Oct 2-3, 2014

This workshop aims at bringing together scholars working with archaeological, archival and other sources in order to trace early developments. Health indicators such as height or longevity and educational indicators (literacy, numeracy) will be studied in their role for standards of living during the ancient, medieval and early modern era as well as their impact for later economic growth and human development.

Can we identify deviations of health development from early income trends and levels, or the traditionally ‘perceived’ degree of development? Were there Impoverished Sophisticates, i.e. economies or regions which reached a surprisingly high educational level, but without a corresponding record of material well-being? Can the new empirical evidence inform us about general theories of human well-being and development?

This workshop is supported by the NWO ClioInfra research project, and will be hosted by the University of Barcelona, Dept. of Economic History and Institutions. The organizers will be Nikola Koepke (Univ. Barcelona) and Joerg Baten (Univ. Tuebingen), supported by an international programme comittee. It will take place Oct 2-3, 2014. We invite paper proposals of 200 words (and max. 2-3 Figures or Tables) to be submitted until

May 1st, 2014.

Limited travel and accomodation support is available. Papers on the above-mentioned indicators and the whole pre-1800 period (1500-1800, 500-1500, ancient, or comparative) are preferred for all world regions,

relative to newer periods. Given the relative scarcity of sources, we will also give prefererence to papers on Africa and (West-, South-,Southeast-) Asia for the 19th C (and will accept 19th C studies on other world regions). Please explain the sources and methods in your proposal, and how you will assess potential selectivities. Papers may be of an exploratory nature. The acceptance (or rejection) of proposals will be 

notified by May 31st, 2014.

Joerg Baten

joerg.baten@uni-tuebingen.de

Univ. Tuebingen