We are pleased to announce that the young scholars selected for the scholarships of the INEM @ ESHET 2025 Session are as follows (by opening the dropdown, you can view a picture of the author and the title of the presentation):
Carlos Ezquerra González
Institut Josefina Castellví i Piulachs, Viladecans, Spain
Behavioral assumptions in macroeconomic modelling: Beyond Adolph Lowe's critique to mainstream economics
Giorgia Lucchini
Università LUMSA, Roma
A methodological and historical analysis of spontaneous order
Villeneuve Louise
Goldsmiths University of London, UK
Jevons and the Quantification of Consumption
“The dialectics of surface and depth: Methodology of economics and history and economic thought for today’s economics”
ESHET 2025 Annual Conference, 22-24 May, Università di Torino
Description
The present proposal stems from the 'Frontiers in Philosophy of Economics’ initiative promoted by the International Network for Economic Method (INEM) to advance the understanding and visibility of the philosophy of economics, with a special focus on early-career scholars. In particular, this call for papers is for a young scholar session at the European Society for the History of Economic Thought annual conference in Torino, 22-24 May 2025, whose main topic is the evolution of the economics discipline from a historical perspective (“It’s the end of Economics (as know it)”).
The main idea is to focus on the possible new interconnections between the two approaches explicitly focusing on economics as a discipline, namely the methodology and philosophy of economics, on one side, and the history of economic thought, on the other. Due to radical specialization in research, but also to the new interdisciplinarity and increasingly “applied” nature of economics, making it difficult for today’s scholars to keep abreast of developments in the various fields, today’s economics appears fragmented into a variety of approaches that diverge from the neoclassical paradigm. This fragmentation might be conducive to a more pluralistic outlook, as desired by critics of the discipline’s monism and insularity. Still, it may also produce a “fragmented” version of pluralism, limiting the possibility of dialogue between different perspectives and, in the end, endangering the (however flexible) unity of the discipline. The desired “engaged” version of pluralism should conversely promote conversations between different communities. A step back from the frontier of specialized, applied research programs is needed to increase the chances of synthesis and cross-fertilization of approaches. As a possible precondition to counteract the most harmful consequences of specialization, we suggest that methodologists and historians of economics cooperate in developing an original “depth-surface dialectics”. This latter should combine the “horizontality” of economic methodology (surface), which is induced by exploring connections and commonalities between such approaches, with the “verticality” of the history of economic thought (depth) applied to the various, specific fields of the discipline.
Session organizers
Angela Ambrosino, Mario Cedrini, and Valentina Erasmo
Submissions
This ESHET-INEM joint session is reserved for young scholars (persons currently enrolled in a PhD, or who have been awarded a PhD no more than five years before the date of the conference, and regardless of age). Applicants should submit a 400-word abstract and up to five keywords by February 20, 2025 to eshet2025@unito.it (acceptance notification by February 27). They are expected to indicate how they would adopt a joint historical and methodological perspective for analyzing the current status of economic discipline, or they might focus on any specific field in economics, but always follow the so-called depth-surface dialectics.
Financial support
The session organizers (Angela Ambrosino, Mario Cedrini, and Valentina Erasmo) will select three abstracts for the session, and each participant will be granted a lump-sum reimbursement (up to 200$) for travel expenses and one (100$) for accommodation, funded by INEM through the “'Frontiers in Philosophy of Economics” initiative.
Session and benefits of participating
The three selected papers will be discussed in an ESHET Conference session (1h30) by two senior scholars, ideally representing the surface and the depth, to provide authors with focus comments and helpful suggestions: a historian of economic thought working on the specific field covered in the paper and a “generalist” economic methodologist or philosopher of economics, acting as discussant for the three session papers. Each young scholar is allotted 15 minutes for presentation (with 15 minutes for discussants and debate).
Important dates
Deadline for abstract submission: February 20
Acceptance notification: February 27
Full papers by May 4
Conference: 22-24 May, 2025