The School of Economics at Lund University has appointed two new honorary doctorates in 2023: Anne McCants and Helga Nowotny

The School of Economics at Lund University has appointed two new honorary doctorates in 2023: Anne McCants, who holds the Ann F. Friedlaender Professorship in History at MIT and Helga Nowotny, Professor Emeritus in Sociology at ETH Zurich. Both honorary doctors have extensive scientific achievements behind them, have a strong profile in international research and have been in contact and exchange with the School of Economics on several levels for several years. Anne McCants holds a PhD in history from UC Berkeley in California. She has a broad research interest – historical demography, material culture, early modern trade and consumption, charity, the relationship between economic growth and living standards – but also more interdisciplinary issues around the application of social science research methodology. McCants was in the years 2018–2022 president of the International Economic History Association and organized the World Economic History Congress in Boston in 2018. She is currently the vice president of the world organization.

Since 2019, McCants has had a diverse collaboration and exchange with Lund University and the School of Economics. In connection with the Department of Economic History turning 70 in December 2019, McCants was invited as a keynote speaker and the following year she was a member of the RQ20 panel that evaluated national economics, economic history and statistics. In September 2022, McCants participated in the WINIR conference organized by the Department of Economic History and she is planning a longer stay in Lund in 2023/2024. 

–Anne is participating in my research program The establishment, growth and legacy of a settler colony: Quantitative panel studies of the political economy of the Cape Colony, which is financed by the Riksbank’s Jubileumsfond (2021-2026). She is one of the most prominent economic historians in the world and is characterized by a genuine curiosity and great breadth of research. The fact that she agreed to be part of the aforementioned research program, despite having never previously studied African economic history, is a good example of Anne never getting tired of learning new things and broadening her research, says Erik Green, Associate Professor in economic history at the School of Economics.

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