Keynote lecture: Ewout Frankema

Friday 10:05-11:00

Ewout Frankema (1974) obtained his PhD in Economics from the University of Groningen (2008), where he wrote a dissertation on the Historical Evolution of Inequality in Latin America, 1870-2000. After his graduation he worked for four years as a lecturer, post-doc and assistant professor at the Social and Economic History group of Utrecht University. In 2008 Frankema was awarded a personal research grant from the Dutch Science Foundation (NWO) to work on the VENI-project (200K) The Colonial Origins of Inequality: A Comparative Analysis of Fiscal Regimes in Asia, Africa and the New World, 1492-2000. Since July 2012 Frankema has been appointed as a full professor and chair of the Rural and Environmental History Group at Wageningen University. In May 2012 he was awarded an NWO VIDI-grant (800K) for his project Exploring Long Term Changes in African Living Standards in Global Perspective. In August 2012 he was granted an ERC Starting Grant (1.500K) for his project Is Poverty Destiny? A New Empirical Foundation of Long Term African Welfare Analysis.

Frankema's research agenda focuses on a deeper understanding of the long-term economic history of developing regions (Africa, Latin America, Asia). His work is based on a holistic conception of historical evolutionary processes in which he explicitly aims to link the distinctive fields of economic and social history, colonial history, rural history, neo-institutional economics, political economy and environmental history. Frankema is a board member of the N.W. Posthumus Institute (the Dutch-Flemish research school of economic and social history), the Maddison project, the African Economic History Network and the Utrecht Center for Global Economic History. He is also director of the Dutch Agrarian History Institute (NAHI), co-executive editor of the Low Countries Journal of Social and Economic History (TSEG) and member of the editorial board of the Economic History of Developing Regions. In 2012-14 Frankema is a visiting fellow of the economic history department of Lund University. In 2013 he has been appointed as member of the prestigious Young Academy of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.