@nickfitzhenry.bsky.social
PhD student in Economic History, LSE. nicholasfitzhenry.co.uk Research: death, disease & doctors during Apartheid Methods: Applied econometrics and historical demography. Teaching: Industrial Rev., History of Middle East
Glad to be helping putting this together. Do come along if you are in Cambridge.
This week @nickfitzhenry.bsky.social, class teacher on the course "Economic History of the Middle East and North Africa", took his students on a field trip to see the Cambridge Cairo Genizah collection - famous from Greif's paper on The Maghribi Traders' Coalition - and the Fitzwilliam 📜🔎
Agreed! Related - a fun collection of seasonal papers I share with my students. cepr.org/voxeu/column...
Was there a few years ago. I hitchhiked up from Abergavenny & had a wonderful afternoon there.
🚨 The Economist has been telling you for years that polygamy causes civil war by locking men out of marriage. A new article with @rebeccasear.bsky.social and @anthrolog.bsky.social explains that the demography of marriage markets doesn't actually work that way. 🧵
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
I'm submitting my PhD dissertation today, with the defence scheduled in early December. Long years of work, but proud of the outcome and excited to develop it further. Thought I'd share the first few pages of the front matter:
UNTIL IT'S DONE, Ep. 2
When the Brownsville Clinic opened in 1916, it was the first birth control center in America. Its very existence felt impossible. For young women, it was a lifeline.
109 years later, the Clinic is long closed—but Brownsville mothers are still struggling.
Facebook reminds me that a year ago I started a project of scanning the journals of the Central African Historical Association, based at the University of Rhodesia/Zimbabwe, which ran from 1970 to the early 1980s. I have uploaded my scans to Dropbox here: www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/ruzbp...
Under-5 pneumonia and influenza deaths decline concurrently with diarrhoeal diseases, as observed in other countries. I suspect the spikes in the early 1970s are due to local waves of the H3N2 global (Hong Kong) flu pandemic.
The decline (while far from fully converging) is also mysterious, especially given the Group Areas Acts, worsening economic conditions, and political unrest. ORT might be part of it, but it became readily promoted only in the late 80s.
Under-5 diarrhoeal disease death rates in South Africa during the 70s and 80s for coloured (mixed-race), indian and white race groups (apartheid state did not collect complete data for the black majority).
The seasonality and heightened rates for the coloured population are quite shocking.
Two come to mind, I’ll pass it on :)
When was the last time you've listened to Graceland. You might want to listen to Graceland again. It's really good.
David Byrne came to my band’s show at a gay bar in Bed-Stuy and sang This Must Be The Place with us and I still haven’t processed it
Source: Strebel P, Hussey G, Metcalf C, Smith D, Hanslo D, Simpson J. An outbreak of whooping cough in a highly vaccinated urban community. J Trop Pediatr. 1991 Mar;37(2):71-6. doi: 10.1093/tropej/37.2.71. PMID: 2027168.
A striking visualisation of vaccine impact: Cape Town whooping cough deaths plummeted after DP (diphtheria and pertussis [whooping cough]) vaccine introduction (1950). Also reveals stark racial health disparities in South Africa, particularly in the first half of the 20th century.
The shipwreck uncovered in Sanday, #Orkney last year has been identified as HMS Hind, later the Earl of Chatham which was wrecked in the Bay of Lopness in 1788.
More than 230 years buried in the seabed, before being released by a storm in 2024.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
That's the post !
Clioguesser: guess the year based on a political map, ranging from 1000 BCE to 2024 CE.
I am 15th on the leaderboard ;)
clioguesser.azurewebsites.net/leaderboard
Congratulations to @nickfitzhenry.bsky.social and Mina Ishizu for receiving the 2025 #LSE Class #Teaching Awards 🧑🏫🥳
info.lse.ac.uk/staff/educat...
#econhist #education
A video I made for a job interview summarising my PhD work and its relevance to students of economics. youtu.be/r4U07e00oY0?...
Tom Hollander's is the best of the genre
I’ve long used FiveThirtyEight’s interactive “Hack Your Way To Scientific Glory” to illustrate the idea of p-hacking when I teach statistics. But ABC/Disney killed the site earlier this month :(
So I made my own with #rstats and Observable and #QuartoPub ! stats.andrewheiss.com/hack-your-way/
This reminds me of an Archbishop Desmond Tutu quote I hold close to my heart.
