Mag. Mag. Dr. Verena Halsmayer
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Curriculum Vitae
Studies of history and economics, University of Vienna (stays abroad: Universitat Autónoma
Barcelona, Københavns Universitet).
2016 PhD in history as part of the program “The sciences in philosophical, historical, and
cultural contexts,” University of Vienna (dissertation: Modeling, Measuring, and Designing
Economic Growth: The Neoclassical Growth Model as a Historical Artifact, 1930s–1960s.)
Several research fellowships, for instance at the Centre for the Philosophy of Natural and
Social Sciences (London School of Economics), the Center for the History of Political
Economy (Duke University), and the Chair of Global Economic History (University of
Konstanz).
2016 –2024 senior research scholar and lecturer (Oberassistentin) at the Chair for Science
Studies, University of Lucerne; 2020 – 2022 research abroad with a postdoc.mobility funding
by the Swiss National Science Foundation.
Since October 2024 University Assistant (postdoc) at the Department of History, University of
Vienna.
Research
Verena Halsmayer’s research concerns the history of economic knowledge and the history of
economics.
For a number of years, she has studied mathematical models as the central means of the
fabrication and circulation of economic knowledge. In particular, she is interested in the
relationships between modeling and narrating, between making ‘the economic’ visible and
manageable, and between models’ active potential and the kinds of questions they exclude.
All of this depends on the concrete situations in which models—supposedly very efficient
tools for both depicting economic phenomena and providing knowledge for intervention—are
built, used, extended, reduced, and dismissed. Publications on the topic include her book,
Managing Growth in Miniature: Solow’s Model as an Artifact (Cambridge University Press
2024).
Her current research deals with the ideas and practices of democratic planning in government,
companies, and alternative settings in the 1970s and 1980s.
More recently, she started working on household accounts and the related procedures of
notation and inscription.
Wider research and teaching interests
- history of economic knowledge
- the history of modeling and measuring in the social sciences
- historical and political epistemologies
- theories and practices of planning in the long 20th century
- tools and procedures of administering, managing, and organizing
- everyday economic reasoning
Publications
Managing Growth in Miniature : Solow's Model as an Artifact. / Halsmayer, Verena.
Cambridge, UK : Cambridge University Press, 2024. (Historical Perspectives on Modern Economics, Vol. 39).Publications: Book › Peer Reviewed
Economic Growth and the Object of Development. / Halsmayer, Verena; Speich Chassé, Daniel.
Routledge Handbook on the History of Development. ed. / Corinna R. Unger; Iris Borowy; Corinne A. Pernet. Vol. London Routledge, 2022. p. 19-33.Publications: Contribution to book › Chapter
Ökonometrisches Planen. / Halsmayer, Verena.
Enzyklopädie der Genauigkeit. ed. / Markus Krajewski; Antonia von Schöning; Mario Wimmer. Konstanz : Konstanz University Press, 2021. p. 304-314.Publications: Contribution to book › Entry for reference work
How Does Economic Knowledge Have a Politics? On the Frustrated Attempts of John K. Galbraith and Robert M. Solow to Fix the Political Meaning of Economic Models in The Public Interest. / Halsmayer, Verena; Hounshell, Eric.
In: KNOW: A Journal on the Formation of Knowledge, Vol. 4, No. 2, 01.09.2020, p. 263–293.Publications: Contribution to journal › Article › Peer Reviewed
Artifacts in the contemporary history of economics. / Halsmayer, Verena.
A Contemporary Historiography of Economics. ed. / Till Düppe; E. Roy Weintraub. Taylor and Francis Inc., 2019. p. 157-176.Publications: Contribution to book › Chapter › Peer Reviewed