Skip to main content

[Updated] Call for Proposals: Annual Meeting of the Business History Conference #BHC2021online

Annual Meeting of the Business History Conference 

Virtual meeting 

March 11-13, 2021 

Proposals due November 14, 2020 


The originally agreed theme of ‘The Ubiquity of Business’ has been dropped. Instead, a new theme ‘Business History: Building for the Future’ has been developed. This year’s BHC annual meeting will be unlike any previous annual meeting as it will be a virtual one. It is hoped that this is only a temporary interlude from the standard get-togethers which we all value so much. However, it also provides an opportunity to be innovative. Four principles underpin our hopes for the annual meeting: 

1. To assist graduate students and emerging scholars as a priority. 

2. To make the conference as interactive as possible. 

3. To regard the meeting as an opportunity to be experimental and radical. 

4. To be as inclusive as is possible. 

To achieve these goals the Program Committee have agreed the following in relaunching the call for papers for the 2021 BHC annual meeting. 

  • The Program Committee will accept proposals for individual papers, whole sessions, e-posters, podcasts, videos, slide shows, roundtables and methodological workshop sessions. 
  • The main aim of the theme is to support graduate students and emerging scholars in the field of business history to develop their careers in these difficult times and where the academic job market is going to be extremely uncertain for some time to come. 
  • The focus of activities will be to help graduate students and emerging scholars to participate and showcase their research as well as providing opportunities for mentoring by established scholars in the field. 
  • Innovative, more experimental and radical session proposals which promote discussion about business history are particularly encouraged and the Program Committee are open to being approached to discuss such proposals prior to the submission deadline. 
  • More established scholars are encouraged to submit proposals which might benefit graduate students and emerging scholars, for example methodological discussions or broad-themed roundtables. 
  • To maximise the opportunities for two-way interaction speaker time will be more limited than usual with an emphasis on discussion. Proposals for mini-plenaries and roundtables are particularly welcomed. 
  • The conference will be less intensive than usual, with activities spread across the day to allow greater engagement from around the world and to avoid Zoom fatigue. 
  • This does mean that there will be significantly fewer opportunities to present work in the traditional format.  
  • To address this, we aim to offer an opportunity for all participants in the annual meeting to showcase their research via a virtual exhibition. 
  • The BHC Doctoral Colloquium will take place, but not in conjunction with the virtual annual meeting. It will probably occur later in the spring.  
  • Similarly, it is envisaged that the usual pre-conference workshops will take place virtually at another time in the year, yet to be decided. However, we are keen to incorporate methodological sessions into the annual meeting program.  

To facilitate participation in the 2021 meeting, the BHC Trustees have voted to provide Alfred Chandler Fund grants to cover registration costs for BHC members presenting papers who are graduate students or emerging scholars, the latter defined as within three years of receipt of their PhD degree. Usually Chandler grants cover travel costs to participate in the annual meeting. BHC membership fees are $30 for graduate students and $40 for emerging scholars. 

The program committee will be chaired by Lucy Newton (University of Reading) and includes Paula de la Cruz Fernández (University of Florida), Marina Moskowitz (University of Wisconsin – Madison), Susie Pak (St. John’s University), Dan Wadhwani (University of Southern California and Copenhagen Business School), along with BHC President Neil Rollings (University of Glasgow). Victoria Barnes (Max Planck Institute for European Legal History) has been added to the committee as a representative of the Emerging Scholars Committee. To discuss a possible alternative style of paper or session proposal contact Neil Rollings (Neil.Rollings@glasgow.ac.uk) or Lucy Newton (l.a.newton@henley.ac.uk) in the first instance. We would also encourage people to use the BHC "session organizer," where organizers may send in their panel interests and solicit colleagues to join them. Organizers can also indicate through a post to H-Business that they are trying to organize a BHC panel proposal around a given theme. 


Proposals may be submitted for individual papers or for entire sessions. Each presentation proposal should include a one-page (300 words) abstract and one-page curriculum vitae (CV) for each participant. Session proposals (unless a roundtable) should include a maximum of four individual presentations. All session proposals should have a cover letter containing a title, a one-paragraph session description, and the names and affiliations of a recruited chair, as well as the contact information for the session organizer.  To submit a proposal go to https://thebhc.org/2021-bhc-meeting and click on the link https://thebhc.org/proposal-instructions.  

The deadline for receipt of all paper and panel proposals is November 14, 2020. Acceptance letters will be sent by December 15, 2020. Everyone appearing on the program must register for the meeting. 

The K. Austin Kerr Prize will be awarded for the best first paper delivered by a new scholar at the annual meeting.  A “new scholar” is defined as a doctoral candidate or a Ph.D. whose degree is less than three years old. You must nominate your paper for this prize on the proposal submission page where indicated. Please check the appropriate box if your proposal qualifies for inclusion in the Kerr Prize competition. 

The BHC awards the Herman E. Krooss Prize for the best English-language dissertation in business history by a recent Ph.D. in history, economics, business administration, the history of science and technology, sociology, law, communications, and related fields. To be eligible, dissertations must be completed in the three calendar years immediately prior to the 2021 annual meeting and may only be submitted once for the Krooss prize. After the Krooss committee has reviewed the proposals, it will ask semi-finalists to submit copies of their dissertations. Finalists will present summaries of their dissertations at a plenary session and will receive a partial subsidy of their travel costs to the meeting. Proposals accepted for the Krooss Prize are not eligible for the Kerr Prize. If you wish to apply for this prize, submit a cover letter, dissertation abstract, and author's c.v., using this form: https://thebhc.org/krooss-prize-nomination. The deadline for proposals for the Krooss prize is November 14, 2020

The Martha Moore Trescott Prize is awarded to the best paper at the intersection of business history and the history of technology presented at the annual meeting of the Business History Conference. The prize will be awarded on the basis of the written version of a paper to be presented at the annual meeting. Those wishing to be considered for the prize must indicate so at the time of submitting their original proposal for the meeting. Self-nominating scholars must also provide the written paper to the Chair of the committee not less than one month before the annual meeting. Though the prize will be awarded on the basis of the written paper, candidates must register for the meeting and present their work. Scholars who are eligible for the Kerr Prize may also enter the Trescott Prize. There are no other restrictions on eligibility. Written papers should be no longer than 4,000 words (exclusive of notes, bibliography, appendices, figures and illustrations). The deadline for receipt of all paper and panel proposals is November 14, 2020. 

As a result of the digital reconfiguration of the BHC annual meeting, the 2021 BHC Doctoral Colloquium in Business History will be held later in spring 2021. This prestigious workshop, funded by Cambridge University Press, will most likely also take place on a remote basis, over two days in either late May or early June.  We may spread the sessions out even more this year, given the likely need for digital interaction. Typically limited to ten students, the colloquium is open to early stage doctoral candidates pursuing dissertation research within the broad field of business history, from any relevant discipline. Topics (see https://thebhc.org/doctoral-colloquia for past examples) may range from the early modern era to the present and explore societies across the globe. Participants work intensively with a distinguished group of BHC-affiliated scholars (including at least two BHC officers), discussing dissertation proposals, relevant literatures and research strategies, and career trajectories. Typically, participants receive partial stipends to defray the costs of travel to the annual meeting.  For 2021 participants, BHC will provide a partial stipend to defray travel costs to the next in-person annual meeting.  The application cycle will be later than usual this year, with applications due by 15 January 2021 via email to amy.feistel@duke.edu and should include: a statement of interest; CV; preliminary or final dissertation prospectus (10-15 pages); and a letter of support from your dissertation supervisor (or prospective supervisor). Questions about the colloquium should be sent to its director, Edward Balleisen, eballeis@duke.edu. Applicants will receive notification of the selection committee’s decisions by 15 February 2021.

Popular posts from this blog

The Exchange has moved to the BHC's website

  Dear members subscribers of The Exchange   The Exchange, the weblog of the BHC, is now part of our website ( https://thebhc.org ). We migrated the blog to serve our membership and interested parties best since Blogger is discontinuing its email service.   Note that this will be the last message we will send from Blogger .   The Exchange was founded by Pat Denault over a decade ago, and it has become an essential channel for announcements from and about the BHC and from our subscribers and members. Announcements from The Exchange will come up on the News section of our website as they did before. However, if you wish to receive these announcements via email, and you have not done so yet, please subscribe to The Exchange by: Going to our website's homepage ( https://thebhc.org ), s crolling down to the end of the page, and clicking on "Subscribe to the Latest BHC News." Or go to the “News” section of our website's homepage ( https://thebhc.org/ ),   and click on “The

Regina Blaszczyk on the Business of Color

In September, MIT Press published Regina Lee Blaszczyk 's book, The Color Revolution , in which she "traces the relationship of color and commerce, from haute couture to automobile showrooms to interior design, describing the often unrecognized role of the color profession in consumer culture." Readers can see some of the 121 color illustrations featured in the book at the MIT PressLog here and here . The author has recently written an essay on her research for the book in the Hagley Archives for the Hagley Library and Archives newsletter.    Reviews can be found in the New York Times , The Atlantic , Leonardo , and Imprint ; one can listen to an audio interview with Reggie Blaszczyk, and read her posts, "How Auto Shows Sparked a Color Revolution" on the Echoes blog and "True Blue: DuPont and the Color Revolution" on the Chemical Heritage Foundation website . Also available is a CHF video of the author discussing another excerpt from her rese

New resource available: Business history and race: a partial, open bibliography

Business history and race: a partial, open bibliography The Business History Conference is working to facilitate the creation of a bibliography of scholarly work on race and business history. We hope that the bibliography will serve as a resource for those seeking to create more inclusive syllabi and understand the historical context for our present moment of reckoning with structural racism in the United States and across the globe. The bibliography is crowdsourced and draws on the collective expertise of the BHC membership. The BHC wishes to expand the list of references already curated and invites your contributions to the bibliography (The current list of references contains 154 titles). Submit your suggestions by (a) emailing additional references to Anne Fleming of the BHC Electronic Media Oversight Committee <acf80 at law.georgetown.ed> or BHC Web Editor Paula de la Cruz-Fernandez <padelacruzf at gmail.com>, (b) tweeting titles to @TheBHCNews or (c) adding it