Promoting Engagement with the Teaching of Economic History

Oxford Brookes University Department for History, Philosophy and Religion

How can we engage students with economic history? The subject has become increasingly marginalised from many university history curricula in recent years, but it remains a fundamental part of the discipline and essential for a proper understanding of much broader topics such as population distribution, patterns of consumption and material culture, and the rise and fall of empires, governments and mass political and social movements. The methods and skills associated with learning how to read economic history also have high transferable value in the graduate job market: for example, numeracy, critical thinking, and understanding of long-range processes of change. This event will draw together good practice in engaging students with economic history and provide a forum for discussing how to re-energise and re-integrate it into mainstream history curricula.