Call for Papers / May 2022 Workshop ‘The Economics and History of Health Crises’, Queen’s Management School, Belfast

The Covid-19 pandemic has led to a vast expansion in academic research output into health crises. But most of this research is conducted by scholars within their disciplinary silos. Discipline-specific language and publishing norms means we are often unaware of relevant research from colleagues in other fields. The aim of the workshop is to foster dialogue between economists, historians and other social scientists who are conducting disciplinary research into the causes, anatomy and consequences of health emergencies, today and in the past.

Academics often struggle to communicate their research findings to policymakers. We intend that this workshop will assist in creating opportunities for translating academic research into formats that may inform actionable policy initiatives. The workshop will conclude with a public roundtable discussion, involving both academics and policymakers from public health institutions.

The workshop is organised jointly by the Centre for Health Research at the Management School (CHARMS) and the Centre for Economic History (QUCEH), both at Queen’s University Belfast. We plan this workshop to be an in-person event in Belfast. Our venue will be Clifton House, Belfast’s historic poor house, constructed by the Belfast Charitable Society in 1774, and the location of the first trials of inoculation and vaccination in Ireland in 1800.

Our keynote speaker is Guido Alfani, Professor of Economic History at Bocconi University, Milan. Professor Alfani is an expert on the history of plagues and epidemics, and the history of famines. His forthcoming article in the Journal of Economic Literature (“Epidemics, Inequality, and Poverty in Preindustrial and Early Industrial Time”) looks at the past for insights about how pandemics can affect inequalities in income, wealth, and health.