Events and Lectures 2021-22

Shutdown: how COVID-19 shook the world's economy

Wednesday 22 September 2021 5:00-6:00pm

Online Public Event

When news first began to trickle out of China about a new virus in December 2019, risk-averse financial markets could never have predicted the total economic collapse that would follow as stock markets fell faster and harder than at any time since 1929, currencies across the world plunged and investors panicked. Adam Tooze's new book, Shutdown, tells the story of what followed and, in conversation with Patrick Wallis, he will survey the damage and outline potential ways into recovery.

Adam Tooze (@adam_tooze) is the author of Crashed, The Deluge and The Wages of Destruction. He has been the recipient of the Wolfson Prize for History, the Longman-History Today Book of the Year Prize and the Lionel Gelber Prize. Tooze has taught at Cambridge and Yale and is now Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Professor of History at Columbia University. Adam is an alumnus of the Economic History Department.

Full event details, including how to register, are here:  Shutdown: how COVID-19 shook the world's economy

Pandemic Public Finance: How historic is it? Lessons from Financial History

Tuesday 2 November, 6:00-7:00pm

Online Public Event

The enormous costs involved in responding to the current pandemic have lifted public borrowing in many countries to levels not seen since the second world war. What does the economic history of earlier periods of very high debt tell us about the current environment of rising public indebtedness and, potentially, higher inflation? 

Panel discussion featuring Professor Olivier Accominotti (LSE), Professor Graciela Kaminsky (George Washington University), Nobel Laureate Professor Thomas Sargent (NYU Stern), and Carmen M Reinhart (VP and Chief Economist of the World Bank Group). 

Full event details, including how to register are here:  Pandemic Public Finance: how historic is it?

 Please note, registration will open on 12 October after 10am.

Career and Family: women’s century-long journey toward equity

Thursday 25 November, 6:00pm-7:00pm

Public Online Event

Claudia Goldin is the Henry Lee Professor of Economics at Harvard University and former President of the American Economic Association. Her new book traces how generations of women have responded to the problem of balancing career and family as the twentieth century experienced a sea change in gender equality, revealing why true equity for dual career couples remains frustratingly out of reach. Drawing on decades of her own groundbreaking research, Goldin provides a fresh, in-depth look at the diverse experiences of college-educated women from the 1900s to today, examining the aspirations they formed—and the barriers they faced—in terms of career, job, marriage, and children; how the era of COVID-19 has severely hindered women’s advancement, yet how the growth of remote and flexible work may be the pandemic’s silver lining. 

 Join us for a conversation including Claudia Goldin, our own Professor Jane Humphries, and others on the themes of gender equity and couple equity.

Full event details, including how to register are here: Career and Family: women's century-long journey toward equity 

Please note, registration will open on 4 November after 10am.