Auriane Terki-MignotKing’s College adt41@cam.ac.uk |
I am currently working towards an MPhil in Economic and Social History at King’s College, and supervised by Dr Leigh Shaw-Taylor. I completed my BA at Cambridge in 2017, graduating with a double starred-first. My undergraduate dissertation focused on recovering quantitative evidence of patterns of female employment in Westmorland between 1787 and 1851. My interest in women’s work began when I studied proto-industrialization theory and became interested in the ways in which historical data could be combined with economic theory to rework key economic concepts in historical context. My interest in a quantitative approach to the study of history was confirmed when I worked as a research assistant for the Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure, of which I am now a member.
Quantitative evidence on women’s work before and during the period of industrialization indeed remains extremely scarce. However, my undergraduate dissertation argued that paying attention to women’s work, as well as furthering our understanding of women’s lives and allowing for a reassessment of the significance of their work to the formal economy, could suggest new chronologies and mechanisms for the Industrial Revolution.
I aim to expand on this for my MPhil research by focusing on recovering evidence of women’s work and occupational structure in various proto-industrial textile regions of France over the course of industrialization, thereby allowing for comparison between textile industries and countries with different chronologies of industrialization.