Business History

Kwelina Thompson’s research centers on histories of political economy with a focus on technology, shifting policy regimes, and globalization. Her work highlights the role of business institutions in the shaping of global governance. Her current project traces the structural transformation of the banking, retail, and telecommunications industries and their influence on notions of state and corporate responsibility during the late twentieth century.

Pierre-Yves Donzé's research will focus on the role of American philanthropists in the formation of modern hospitals in China between the 1880s and 1930s. In particular, this work will highlight the transfer from the United States of organizational and managerial knowledge related to healthcare.

Maki Umemura is writing a global history of the business of regenerative medicine since the 1980s, which emerged from the Boston area. It follows the fluctuating fortunes in each of the subfields of tissue engineering, cell therapy, and gene therapy.

Arthur Rothier-Bautzer is writing a history of commercial bank balance sheet management in the United States, the United Kingdom, and France in the second half of the 20th century. This includes banks' statistical modelling, subsidiary creation and their understanding of liquidity.

Xialene Chang’s research traces the rise of Diversity Management in the U.S. from the perspective of Pauli Murray, Aileen Hernandez, and Elsie Cross – three Black women whose life’s work crucially informed Diversity Management’s trajectory but remain unacknowledged in existing historical accounts.

Peter Gibson’s research will focus on historical links between American firms in China and Chinese American businesses. Using Baker Library’s collections of firm records, it will enhance understanding of both America–China trade and Chinese American history.

Jeremy Goodwin’s dissertation examines connections between small-scale entrepreneurship and economic development in American thought and politics, from the 1950s through the 1990s. He shows how entrepreneurial development programs fit into the broader arc of postwar conservatism and the rise of neoliberalism.

Minseok Jang’s dissertation project, “Firing a Monopoly: How Kerosene Shaped Anti-monopoly against Standard Oil, 1859-1911,” examines the environmental and global contexts around kerosene and how this new energy resource for artificial illumination directed anti-monopoly politics against Standard Oil.