The Research Group on Global and Mediterranean Economic and Social History studies the development, structure and transformations of the economies and societies of the Mediterranean, as well as their interaction with and integration into the larger globalizing world in the modern and contemporary eras. It undertakes the comparative study of economic development in different areas and time periods, and focuses on the economic, social, institutional and cultural change during the period of transition from the pre-industrial to the industrial world. Research is focusing on the living and work conditions of the Mediterranean populations and their social and geographical movements; the formation of land settlement and rural and social landscape patterns; the labour and the entrepreneurship in this world in movement; both big and small business, as well as formation and regulation of the markets, public policies and development of modern state institutions; innovation and inertia, technological and cultural transfers and their social preconditions.
Researchers pursue an interdisciplinary approach combining economic and social history with economics and economic geography, political and cultural theory and history, as well as labour and business history. Overall, the Department intends to foster a kind of history that pays equal attention to structures and actors -including class, gender and ethnic-national collective subjects.
In its field of interests, the Section on Global and Mediterranean Economic and Social History organises research projects, conferences, seminar courses and lectures and provides publications and open-access databases. In collaboration with University Departments it will organize and offer Programs of Postgraduate and Doctoral Studies.
The purpose of this research project is to produce a historical account of the evolution of Greece’s tobacco sector in the period that spans between the end of the Greek Civil War (1949) and the country’s accession into the EEC in 1981.
The aim of the research program is to record the lazarettos and the quarantine services that operated in the Greek state from the declaration of the Greek Revolution in 1821 to 1923, when its borders were finalized after a decade of wars (1912-1922). The research will focus on lazarettos, quarantine services and health stations which were established and operated by the central administration, as well as on those constructed by municipalities, mainly islanders, in an effort to protect their population on one hand and their economics operations on the other hand.
The aim of the research project “Land Ownership and Family Farm Income in Nineteenth-Century Greece: The Unpublished Land “Registers” of the Kapodistrian Period (1830)” is to study a number of local agricultural statistics produced during the tenure of President Ioannis Kapodistrias (1828-1831) and hitherto unknown in the literature, and to utilise them in order to draw conclusions about the distribution of wealth and farm income in rural Greece at the end of the War of Independence.
Scientific coordinator: Leda Papastefanaki
This research project aims at deepening the understanding in the history of mining activities and the formation of the mining landscapes in Greece during 19th-20th centuries.
Scientific coordinator: Socrates Petmezas
IMS-FORTH and the Department of History and Archaeology of the University of Crete co-organized two international conferences of Economic and Social History (organizers: Christos Hadjiiossif and Socrates Petmezas):
Credit Activities in Eastern Mediterranean : Economic and Social Aspects, ca. 1750-1920
Rethymno, 29-30 September 2000
Participants (apart from the organizers):
Les Societes Mediterraneennes dans un Age de Globalisation et de Crise (1873-1896)
Rethymno, 25-27 August 2003
Participants (apart from the organizers):
Inquiring Temporal Otherness: Timekeeping and Attitudes towards Time in the Balkans and the Ottoman Empire (16th-20th c.)
Rethymno, IMS-FORTH, 23-24 October 2015.
Participants (apart from the organizers):
The conference "Mining landscapes and enterprises in Greece, 19th-20th c." was organized by IMS-FORTH and the Piraeus Bank Group Cultural Foundation in Athens, 22 November 2019, in the framework of the research project METOPO (WP4).
Participants (apart from the organizer Leda Papastefanaki):
IMS-FORTH co-organized, with the Department of History and Archaeology of the University of Ioannina (Laboratory for historical research of modern and contemporary societies) and Université Lumière Lyon 2-LARHRA (ANR TIME-US programme), an early career and doctoral workshop entitled “Labour and gender in South-European manufacture, 19th -20th centuries. Comparative perspectives” (Praxi Network, Athens, 24.2.2020).
Participants (apart from the organizers Leda Papastefanaki and Manuela Martini):
The conference «Morality and Economy» was organized in IMS-FORTH in Rethymno, 11-12 September 2020, in the framework of the research project "Moral economy. Issues of morality in the public discourse about market and profit in Greece, late 19th century-first half of the 20th century".
Participants (apart from the organizer Nikos Potamianos, IMS-FORTH):
«Commodities in History: Theoretical Reflections and Empirical Case Studies»
Webinar series, September - October 2022
The Department of Mediterranean and Global Economic and Social History of the Institute for Mediterranean Studies organized the webinar series "Commodities in History: Theoretical Reflections and Empirical Case Studies" held in 6 webinars in September - October 2022. You can watch the video live streams here.
