Eona Karakacili

Assistant Professor
PhD, University of Toronto, 2001

 

Research Interests

Eona Karakacili is an economic historian whose research centers upon the influences of agricultural productivity and income distribution to growth, as well as issues in global divergence of wealth, with a focus in the latter on development within the agricultural sector. Her approach is to reconstruct medieval English rural communities in their socioeconomic, environmental and cultural contexts, and analyze them over time and between places, with consideration of the exchange between the local with the national and international processes. She is particularly interested in the influence of ordinary people's decisions on development. Her doctoral thesis provided the first direct measurement of the output of food per worker, at the local level, for pre-industrial western Europe. This reassessment of agrarian labour productivity's levels and impact upon England's pre-industrial economic growth was awarded the Alexander Gershenkron Prize for best dissertation from the Economic History Association. Professor Karakacili is in the process of turning this into a book: Growth Before Industrialization: English Agrarian Labour Productivity During the Fourteenth Century. Professor Karakacili runs the Business & Economic History Workshop Series for the Department and has co-organized two conferences: Medieval Global Economies (2005) and Medieval Social and Political Institutions: Their Economic Effects (Fall, 2007).

Publications

"English Agrarian Labor Productivity Rates Before the Black Death: A Case Study," Journal of Economic History Vol. 64, No. 1 (March 2004): 24-60.

"Peasants, Productivity, and Profit in the Open Fields of England: A Study of Economic and Social Development," (Dissertation Summary), Journal of Economic History 62 (2002): 538-43.

Master's Level supervisory privileges

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Current Courses

Courses Taught

  • HIS 2401E - Medieval Europe