Postdoctoral Research Fellow (East India Company)

Role Description

Department

The School for Business and Society at the University of York brings together business history, management, and social and public policy in a School committed to research that serves the public good. 

This post sits within RISK-LABS: Risk Societies: The Global Firm as a Laboratory of Risk Management, 1280–2030, a five-year European Research Council Advanced Grant led by Professor Teresa da Silva Lopes. RISK-LABS reconceives the firm as a historical laboratory of risk governance, tracing across seven centuries how firms identified, distributed and managed risk under conditions of uncertainty. It does so through four British global firms: the Merchants of the Staple, the English East India Company, Jardine Matheson and BAE Systems

Role

You will lead Work Package 3 on the English East India Company, the archetype of the early modern company-state, and examine how an organisation combining private commerce with sovereign authority governed overlapping risks: famine, epidemic disease, war, rebellion, fiscal instability and supply-chain disruption. Your research will centre on the India Office Records at the British Library and The National Archives, covering the Company's governance, its shipping and maritime risk, and its transition from commerce to territorial rule, situating these within the histories of capitalism, mercantilism and colonialism. You will build and manage historical datasets, including quantitative material; publish in leading journals; present at conferences; help organise project events; and work closely with the Principal Investigator, the team and the project's research assistants in India and Hong Kong.

Skills, Experience & Qualification needed

• A PhD, awarded or submitted, in business history, economic history, or a cognate discipline.

• Knowledge of the English East India Company and of the British commercial and imperial world

• Knowledge of the literatures on commercial and political risk, on the histories of capitalism, mercantilism and colonialism, and the judgement to work with archives.

• Ability to read and interpret manuscript sources in early modern and modern English, and reading knowledge of a further European language relevant to the Asia trade is desirable (e.g. French, Portuguese, or Dutch).

• A record of independent archival research in the India Office Records, The National Archives or comparable collections, and a publication record commensurate with career stage.

• Ability to build and manage structured historical datasets, including quantitative material from accounts and shipping records; familiarity with prosopographical or network methods and with cutting-edge AI transcription techniques.

• Excellent written and spoken English, and the ability to communicate research to specialist and non-specialist audiences.

• Ability to work independently and collaboratively in an international team across countries and time zones, and willingness to travel for extended archival research.

Interview date: To be agreed. For further information please contact Professor Teresa da Silva Lopes at teresa.lopes@york.ac.uk 

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