Katherine Jane Humphries, CBE FBA (born 9 November 1948), is a Fellow of All Souls College, University of Oxford with the Title of Distinction of professor of economic history. Her research interest has been in economic growth and development and the industrial revolution. She is the former president of the Economic History Society and the current vice-president of the Economic History Association.
Early life Humphries gained her economics degree from Newnham College, Cambridge, in 1970; she went on to Cornell University to do both her masters and then her doctorate which she completed in 1973.
Career Her professional life began at University of Massachusetts Amherst, first as an assistant professor (1973–1979), then as an associate professor (1979–1980). She was lecturer at the University of Cambridge and later a fellow of Newnham College (1980–1995). In 1993, during her period at Newnham College, Humphries was a visiting fellow at the Centre for Population and Development within Harvard University's School of Public Health. Humphries returned to Newnham College as reader in economics and economic history in 1995, she then took up a post as reader in economic history and fellow at All Souls College, University of Oxford in 1998. In 2004, she was awarded a Title of Distinction as professor of economic history at All Souls. In 2012, Humphries was elected a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA), the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and social sciences. After retiring from Oxford, she became Centennial Professor of Economic History at the London School of Economics in 2018.
Edited journals Humphries has sat on the editorial boards of a number of peer-reviewed journals. She is currently on the editorial boards of Gender, Work and Organization, and Feminist Economics.
Honours On 29 January 2016 Humphries received an honorary doctorate from the Faculty of Educational Sciences at Uppsala University, Sweden. In 2018 she received an honorary doctorate from Sheffield University. Her 2019 article 'Unreal Wages? Real Income and Economic Growth in England, 1260-1850', co-authored with Jacob Weisdorf, was awarded the 2019 Royal Economic Society Prize.
Selected bibliography
Books Humphries, Katherine Jane (1973). The role of the manufacturing sector in economic development (Ph.D thesis). Cornell University. OCLC 64678496. Humphries, Jane (1995). Gender and economics. Aldershot, England: Brookfield, Vermont, USA Edward Elgar. ISBN 9781852788438. Humphries, Jane; Rubery, Jill (1995). The economics of equal opportunities. Manchester, England: Equal Opportunities Commission. ISBN 978-1870358477. Humphries, Jane; Robeyns, Ingrid; Agarwal, Bina (2005). Amartya Sen's work and ideas: a gender perspective. London New York: Routledge. ISBN 9780415373203. Humphries, Jane; Albelda, Randy P; Himmelweit, Susan (2005). Dilemmas of lone motherhood. London New York: Routledge. ISBN 9780415360180. Humphries, Jane (2010). Childhood and child labour in the British Industrial Revolution. Cambridge, UK New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521847568. Humphries, Jane; Floud, Roderick; Johnson, Paul (2014). Cambridge economic history of modern Britain: 1870 to the present (2nd ed.). Cambridge New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781107686731.
Chapters in books Humphries, Jane; McNay, Kirsty (2009), "Death and gender in Victorian England", in Kanbur, Ravi; Basu, Kaushik (eds.), Arguments for a better world: essays in honor of Amartya Sen | Volume II: Society, institutions and development, Oxford New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 259–279, ISBN 9780199239979.
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