Research Interests
I combine economics and history to better understand the performance of firms, industries, economies and societies. Specifically, my expertise is thinking through the short, medium and long term consequences of policy decisions, given the lessons from history. I am open to supervise projects across the field of economic history, broadly defined. Topics of interest include the following:
- Economics: banking and financial institutions; cooperative enterprises; competition and innovation policy; macroeconomic policymaking process; economics of religion; demographic economics; anthropometrics
- History: economic history; financial history; business history; penal and prison history; the Netherlands in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries; post-Famine Ireland
- Pedagogy: curriculum and syllabus design; research-led teaching practices
Public outreach & key achievements
In addition to my research, I lead a pedagogical project which aims to re-insert the study of economic history into the economics curriculum, and help prepare postgraduate students embarking on their PhD research. Thus far the project has resulted in a multi-authored edited volume which shows how, practically, economic history can be used to enhance classroom teaching and learning.
Blum, Matthias, and Colvin, Christopher L., An Economist’s Guide to Economic History (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). URL: http://www.blumandcolvin.org
Research students
Current
| PhD area | economic history, industrial revolution, water power, Germany |
| Name | Malte Hinrichs |
| Years of study | 2023 - present |
| Country | Germany |
| PhD area | financial history, financial crises, Hong Kong |
| Name | Yibin Liu |
| Years of study | 2023 - present |
| Country | China |
| PhD area | Entrepreneurship and Globalisation: Do Social Ties Matter? A Study of Marwaris, Banians and Parsis in India, 1857-1970 |
| Name | Pallavi Singh |
| Years of study | 2021-present |
| Country | India |
| PhD area | Market Structure, Innovation, and Britain’s Relative Economic Decline |
| Name | Kyle Richmond |
| Years of study | 2020-present |
| Country | Northern Ireland |
Alumni: Where are they now
| PhD area | Rules, discretion and industrialisation: The patent system of the Netherlands, 1817-1869 |
| Name | Homer Wagenaar |
| Years of study | 2018-2022 |
| Country | The Netherlands |
| Current position | Policy Adviser, Belgian Government, Brussels |
| PhD area | Patents, machine learning, and war: invention during the British Industrial Revolution |
| Name | Stephen Billington |
| Years of study | 2016-2019 |
| Country | Northern Ireland |
| Current Position | Lecturer in Economics, Ulster University, Belfast |
| PhD area | Industrialisation, Politics and Banking Instability in Late Imperial Russia |
| Name | Nikita Lychakov |
| Years of study | 2014-2018 |
| Country | Russia and USA |
| Current Position | Research Fellow, Moscow School of Management Skolkovo, Russia |
| PhD area | Historical Reflections on Religion, Finance and Economic Development |
| Name | Stuart Henderson |
| Years of study | 2013-2017 |
| Country | Republic of Ireland |
| Current Position |
Lecturer in Financial Services, Ulster University, Belfast |