Meredith Paker appointed as Associate Professor in Economic and Social History
The Faculty of History and All Souls College are pleased to announce that Meredith Paker has been appointed as the incoming Associate Professor of Economic and Social History.
Dr Meredith Paker is an economic historian whose research lies at the intersection of labour economics and economic history. Her work addresses fundamental questions about labour market dynamics, inequality, and policy responses to economic crises, with a particular focus on mass unemployment, wage structures, and industrial reallocation. Combining econometric analysis, machine learning, and novel archival data, she brings innovative methods to bear on major historical questions with relevance to present day policy-making.
Dr Paker received her DPhil and MPhil in Economic and Social History from the University of Oxford (Nuffield College), where she studied as a Marshall Scholar, and her undergraduate degree in Economics, summa cum laude, from the University of Georgia. Her scholarship has appeared in leading journals including The Journal of Economic History, The Economic History Review, and Explorations in Economic History. She has received recognition as a finalist for both the Alexander Gerschenkron Dissertation Prize from the Economic History Association and the Twentieth-Century Dissertation Prize at the XIX World Economic History Congress. As an Assistant Professor at Grinnell College, she has won grants from the Mellon Humanities in Action fund and the Alliance to Advance Liberal Arts Colleges.
Her research encompasses two complementary themes. The first examines mass unemployment and labour market inequality, showing how recessions can amplify structural transformation and entrench disparities across industries, regions, and demographic groups. Her recent work in this area has explored how policy interventions such as unemployment insurance and devaluation shaped the distributional effects of the Great Depression. The second strand investigates the structures and organization of historical labour markets, focusing on workers’ bargaining power, job quality, and the measurement of living standards. Recent projects include demonstrating evidence of monopsony in early modern London and using machine learning to reconstruct seven centuries of English wages.
Before joining Grinnell, Dr Paker brought her expertise to policy work as an economist at the Federal Housing Finance Agency, contributing to research and modelling of the US housing market. She also brings experience from the Bank of England and RAND.
