Dr. Verena Halsmayer

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• Curriculum Vitae

  Since October 2024 University Assistant (postdoc) at the Department of History, University of Vienna.

  2016 –2024 senior research scholar and lecturer (Oberassistentin) at the Chair for Science Studies, University of Lucerne; September 2020 – July 2022 research abroad funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation.

  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).

  Spring 2020 Visiting Professor, Programme International Minerve, Université Lumière Lyon II.

  2016 PhD in history as part of the program “The sciences in historical, philosophical, and cultural contexts,” University of Vienna (dissertation: Modeling, Measuring, and Designing Economic Growth: The Neoclassical Growth Model as a Historical Artifact, 1930s–1960s.)

  Studies of history and economics, University of Vienna (stays abroad: Universitat Autónoma Barcelona, Københavns Universitet).

  Link to full PDF-CV
• Awards

  2025 Best Monograph Award, European Society for the History of Economics.
  
  2016 Grete Mostny Best Dissertation Award, Faculty of Historical and Cultural Studies, University of Vienna.
  
  2013 Samuels Young Scholar Award, Society for the History of Economics (HES).
  
  2011 Archival Research Grant of the Center for the History of Political Economy, Duke University, USA.
  
  2007 Dr. Maria Schaumayer Prize for master thesis in economics, University of Vienna.
  
  2005 Merit grant, Faculty of Economics and Information Science, University of Vienna.

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• Research Interests

  Verena Halsmayer’s research concerns the history of economic knowledge and the history of the social sciences.

  In her habilitation project, she focuses on the history of ideas and practices of economic democracy and democratic planning in government, industrial enterprises, and alternative settings in the 1970s and 1980s.

  More recently, she started working on the history of “the household” as an economic site in the long twentieth century. In this context, she is currently reading and teaching on the history of feminist economics as well as on private household accounts and the related procedures of notation and inscription.

  For some time, she has been working on the history of economics, in particular the role of mathematical models in the fabrication and circulation of economic knowledge. Her book on the topic was recently published: Managing Growth in Miniature: Solow’s Model as an Artifact (Cambridge University Press 2024), which received the Best Monograph Award of the European Society for the History of Economics in 2025.

  Wider research and teaching interests

  • history of economic knowledge
  • history of the social sciences
  • history of economics
  • theories and practices of planning in the long twentieth century
  • the history of economic democracy
  • everyday economic reasoning
  • the household as an economic site
  • modeling and measuring as epistemic practices
  • historical and political epistemologies

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• Memberships

  2021–2024 Member of the organizing committee of the research network “Wissen und Wirtschaft” (2022 convenor of the bi-monthly colloquium, online), Chair of Global Economic History, University of Konstanz, previously Center for the History of Knowledge, ETH Zurich.

  2021–2023 Co-convenor of the discussion group “Epistemologies of Welfare” (monthly meetings, online), with Eric Hounshell (University of Lucerne) and Monika Wulz (ETH Zurich).

  2015–2021 Member of the research network “The Sociology of Economic Knowledge,” funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG).

  2017–2019 Member of the research network “The Sociology of Sociology,” funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG).

  Gesellschaft für Geschichte der Wissenschaften, der Medizin und der Technik (GWMT)

  Schweizerische Gesellschaft für Geschichte (SGG)

  Historikerinnennetzwerk Schweiz

  Society for the History of Recent Social Science (HISRESS)

  Society for the History of Economics (HES)

  Founding member of HELVHET (History of Economic Knowledge in Switzerland)