Women’s Commitee Workshop – Women & Entrepreneurship: Agency, Experience, and Enterprise

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Women's Commitee Workshop - Women & Entrepreneurship: Agency, Experience, and Enterprise
Date / time
12/12/2025, All day

Annual Workshop of the Economic History Society Women’s Committee

University College London
Friday, 12 December 2025
Theme: Women & Entrepreneurship: Agency, Experience, and Enterprise

 

Programme

10:00 – 10:30    Registration and coffee

10:30 – 10:45   Word of welcome and purpose of the day

10:45 – 12:15    Panel 1:  Changing positions: Female entrepreneurs and the 19th century

  1. Ruveyda Nur Gozen – Property Rights and Innovation Dynamism: The Role of Women Inventors (Cardiff Business School)
  2. Esther Arenas-Arroyo – Invisible Women: Female Labor Participation (Vienna University of Economics and Business)
  3. Valeria Peshko – You Never Give Me Your Money: Barriers to Female Entrepreneurship in the Russian Empire, 1892-1914. (University of Helsinki)
  4. Kristina Molin Cherneski – “Every one is a dressmaker”: Business women, life cycle and culture in Northeast England, 1850-1900 (Northumbria University)

12:15-13:15       Lunch

13:15-14:45 Panel 1: Women in Charge: Widows, Networks, and Engagement

  • Ramona Negrón – Widow’s Agency in a Patriarchal Marketplace: The Case of Sophia Trip (1615-1679) (KITLV)
  • Ben Weddell – Social Networks as Economic Assets: Womens’ Economic Agency and Activity in Early Modern Maritime Communities 1750-1800 (University of Reading & Royal Maritime Museum Greenwich)
  • Femke Valkhoff – Liquid Legacies: The Life, Knowledge, and Work of Brewsters from the Haarlem Vooght-Olycan Dynasty (Utrecht University)
  • Leonard Smith and Rebecca Wynter – “Lady Speculators”: Women as Proprietors of Private Lunatic Asylums in England, c1700-1900′ (University of Birmingham & University of Amsterdam)

14:45-15:15      Coffee break 

15:15-16:30 Panel 3: The Wills of Women: Economic Activity

  • Robert G. Nantes – The Case of Anne Harding, a Bankrupt (independent)
  • Harry Smith – Finding female entrepreneurs in wills, England and Wales, 1538-1786 (University of Exeter)
  • Gabriëlle La Croix – “I Bequeath to Her”: Women’s Ownership Practices through Wills and Codicils on St. Croix (1793-1811) (University of Copenhagen)

16:30    Networking and drinks (non-complimentary)

Register here.

 

SHAPE