Professorships awarded this year. Funded by the Wolfson Foundation, these awards finance replacement teaching and research expenses, freeing a senior scholar to pursue a three-year research programme in the humanities or social sciences. Sheilagh Ogilvie’s project explores the relationship between education and economic growth. Theories of economic growth ascribe a central role to education, but no study has yet shown that before 1900 education caused growth, rather than growing incomes enabling people to consume more education. Ogilvie thinks this puzzle can be resolved by moving away from national-level aggregative comparisons to focus on the level of the household and the individual – where educational and economic choices are actually made. To do this, she will analyze a unique household-level database recording people’s educational, economic and demographic decisions in central European communities between 1600 and 1900. Her aim is to shed light on the micro-level relationship between education, economic growth and human well-being. Ogilvie will take up her Wolfson British Academy Professorship in October 2013.

British Academy Website: http://www.britac.ac.uk/funding/awards/posts/profs-2013.cfm