Mag. Mag. Dr. Verena Halsmayer

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• Curriculum Vitae

  Education

  • 2016 Dr. phil. (history, summa cum laude), University of Vienna

  • 2009 Mag. phil. (history, summa cum laude), University of Vienna.

  • 2007 Mag. rer.soc.oec. (economics, summa cum laude), University of Vienna (semester-long stays abroad: Universitat Autónoma Barcelona, Københavns Universitet).

   

  Academic Positions

  Since 10|2024 Postdoc University Assistant, Department of History, University of Vienna.

  04|2016 – 09|2024 Senior Research and Teaching Fellow (Oberassistentin) for Science  Studies, Department of Cultural and Science Studies, University of Lucerne.

  09|2020 – 07|2022 Research Fellow, Swiss National Fund (SNSF) Postdoc.Mobility

  02|2020 – 03|2020 Visiting Professor, Programme International Minerve, Université Lumière Lyon II.

  07|2015 – 03|2016 Research and Teaching Fellow (Assistentin), Department of Cultural and Science Studies, University of Lucerne.

  01|2015 – 07|2015 Writing-Up Fellow, KLI Institute, Austria.

  10|2010 – 09|2014    Fellow, PhD program “The sciences in historical, philosophical, and cultural contexts,” University of Vienna.

  10|2013 – 12|2013 Research Fellow, Centre for the Philosophy of Natural and Social  Sciences, London School of Economics.

  08|2012 – 12|2012 Visiting Fellow, Center for the History of Political Economy, Duke University, USA.

  03|2008 – 05|2008 Research staff member, Institute for Advanced Studies (IHS), Vienna.

  03|2007 – 12|2009 Research staff member, Austrian Institute of Economic Research (WIFO), Vienna.

   

   
• Awards

  2025 Best Monograph Award, European Society for the History of Economics.
  
  2016 Grete Mostny Best Dissertation Award, Faculty of Historical and Cultural Studies, University of Vienna.

  2013 Samuels Young Scholar Award, Society for the History of Economics (HES).

  2011 Archival Research Grant of the Center for the History of Political  Economy, Duke University, USA.
  
  2007 Dr. Maria Schaumayer Prize for master thesis in economics, University of Vienna.

  2005 Merit grant, Faculty of Economics and Information Science, University of Vienna.

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• Research Interests

  Verena Halsmayer’s research concerns the history of economic knowledge and the history of
  economics.

  For a number of years, she has studied mathematical models as the central means of the
  fabrication and circulation of economic knowledge. In particular, she is interested in the
  relationships between modeling and narrating, between making ‘the economic’ visible and
  manageable, and between models’ active potential and the kinds of questions they exclude.
  All of this depends on the concrete situations in which models—supposedly very efficient
  tools for both depicting economic phenomena and providing knowledge for intervention—are
  built, used, extended, reduced, and dismissed. Publications on the topic include her book,
  Managing Growth in Miniature: Solow’s Model as an Artifact (Cambridge University Press
  2024).

  Her current research deals with the ideas and practices of economic planning in government, companies, and alternative settings in the 1970s and 1980s.

  More recently, she started working on household accounts and the related procedures of
  notation and inscription.

  Wider research and teaching interests

  • history of economic knowledge
  • the history of modeling and measuring in the social sciences
  • historical and political epistemologies
  • theories and practices of planning in the long 20th century
  • tools and procedures of administering, managing, and organizing
  • everyday economic reasoning
• Conference Organisation

  Scientific Talks and Conferences (Selection)

  Invited Papers and Comments

  
  

  2023–2026 Book presentations Managing Growth in Miniature: Solow’s Model as an Artifact: SPHERE Seminar “Historical, philosophical and anthropological approaches to numbers, measurement and measurability” (Université Paris Diderot), Séminaire romand d’histoire des sciences et des technique (University of Lausanne), academic seminar series (University of São Paulo), Cercle d’Épistémologie Économique (Paris 1 Panthéon- Sorbonne), Geschichte am Mittwoch (Universität Wien), H2M seminaire (Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne).

  
  01|2025 “Counter-planning from the shopfloor: Alternative Ökonomien, "Wissenschaft vom Arbeiterstandpunkt" und der Lucas Plan,” Forschungskolloquium Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Universität Erfurt.

  10|2024 Comment and Discussion of Michele Alacevich, The Political Consequences of Economic Development, ie.talks: Public Lecture Series of the Department of Development Studies, University of Vienna.

  
  06|2024 “Mind the Gap: Private Account Books as (Historiographical) Material,” Conference Recovering the Values of Accounting: The Backbone of Human Decision Making, University of Lausanne.

  
  06|2023 “Planning, Foresight, and Coordination: Interventionist Economic Knowledge,” Workshop Economics Inside and Out: Interdisciplinary Approaches, Univ. of Nijmegen.

  
  09|2022 Discussant on Roundtable Intellectual History and the History of Economic Thought, with Emma Rothschild (Harvard University, USA), Béatrice Cherrier (CNRS & CREST & Ecole Polytechnique, Frankreich), Ben Jackson (University of Oxford, UK); organized by the Joint Center for History and Economics (Cambridge, UK; Harvard, USA; and Sciences Po, France), University of Cambridge.

  
  06|2022 “Antizipieren, abgleichen, anleiten: Planungswissenschaft in der mixed economy,” Colloquium Modern History, University of Konstanz.

  
  04|2021 “Concluding Comments,” Conference Worlds of Management. Transregional Approaches to Management Knowledge since 1945, University of Vienna (online).

  
  02|2021 “How does Economic Knowledge have a Politics?,” with Eric Hounshell, Webinar Series The Politics of Economics in the Time of COVID-19, CRASSH (Center for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities), University of Cambridge.

  
  09|2019 “Economic Models and Practices of Governance,” Workshop Doing Debt: Praxeology of Sovereign Debt in the Long 20^th Century, Institut für Geschichtswissenschaften, Humboldt Universität Berlin.

  
  07|2018 “Growth and Development,” Workshop The History of Modern Macroeconomics, Center for the History of Political Economy, Duke University.

   

  Other Presentations

   

  09|2024 “Counter-planning from the shop floor. Alternative Ökonomien, situiertes Planungswissen und der Lucas Plan,” GWMT annual meeting, Leuphana University Lüneburg.

  11|2023 “Nur ein Modell: Neoklassisches Wachstum und Solows Modell als historisches Artefakt,” Rethinking Economics Switzerland lecture series “Ökonomie und Geschichte,” University of Lucerne.

  
  04|2016 “‘Applying theory’ to data and policy-making? Model construction and circulation: a case study of Leif Johansen’s multi-sector growth model,” Conference Becoming Applied: the Transformation of Economics after 1970, Duke University.

  
  02|2016 “Input-output models and their affordances for macroeconomic planning,” Winter School What happens to the data in ‘Big Data’? New Practices of Quantification between Politics, Science and Technology, University of Namur.

  
  07|2015 “Modeling, Measuring, and Designing Economic Growth,” Montréal Summer School in the History of Science and Economics, University of Québec at Montréal.

  
  10|2014 “Mathematics and the Language of Economics,” with Roger E. Backhouse, Workshop Language(s) and Language Practice in Business and the Economy, Vienna University of Economics and Business.

  
  06|2014 “Making Productivity Growth a Measurable Entity,” Workshop Quantity and Quality, KLI, Klosterneuburg.

   

  Organization of Workshops and Panels

   

  07|2025 Panel “Imagination und Widerstand: Gegen-Sichtbarkeiten im Kapitalismus (20.Jahrhundert)” with Matthias Ruoss, 7. Schweizerische Geschichtstage, University of Lucerne.

  
  05|2025 Double panel “Beyond the common sites of the history of economics” with Cléo Chassonery-Zaïgouche and Roni Hirsch, annual meeting of the European Society for the History of Economics (ESHET), University of Torino.

  
  02|2024 Workshop “Haushaltsbücher in der Sammlung Frauennachlässe (Wien): Ein explorativer Workshop,” with Sebastian Felten and Li Gerhalter, University of Vienna.

  
  01|2023 Workshop “Historicizing Interventionist Social Knowledge,” with Eric Hounshell,University of Lucerne.

  
  09|2022 Workshop “Values and Valuations in the History of Economic Knowledge,” with Monika Wulz, Harro Maas, and Catherine Herfeld, University of Lucerne.

  12|2021 Double panel “Historicizing Interventionist Economic Knowledge, 1950s-1980s,” with Eric Hounshell, annual meeting of the History of Economics Society (HES), University of Utrecht (online).

   

  09|2021 Workshop “Helvetic History of Economics,” with Catherine Herfeld and Harro Maas, University of Lausanne.

  
  07|2021 Reading seminar “Wissens- und Wissenschaftsgeschichte des Wohlfahrtsstaates,” with Monika Wulz and Eric Hounshell, annual meeting of the German History of Science Association (GTG/GMWT), University of Vienna (online).

  
  09|2017  Workshop “Cultures of Economic Expertise,” with Leon Wansleben and Alexander Lenger, London School of Economics (LSE).

  
  04|2017 History of Recent Economics Conference (HISRECO), with Yann Giraud, Pedro Garcia Duarte, and Joel Isaac, University of Lucerne.

  
  04|2014  Panel “Contextualized Histories of Social Science Methods and Methodologies,” with Christian Dayé, European Social Science History Conference, University of Vienna.

  
  09|2013 Workshop “Fragen der Methodologie in der Historiographie der Sozial- und Kulturwissenschaften,” with Christian Dayé, University of Vienna.

  
  09|2013  Panel “Die Produktion des ökonomischen Mainstreams 1930-1960. Praktiken, Institutionen und Widerstände,” annual meeting of the German History of Science Association (GWG, GMWT), University of Mainz.

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• Memberships

  Research Groups

  2021–2024 Member of the organizing committee of the research network “Wissen und Wirtschaft” (2022 convenor of the bi-monthly colloquium, online), Chair of Global Economic History, University of Konstanz, previously Center for the History of Knowledge, ETH Zurich.

  2021–2023 Co-convenor of the discussion group “Epistemologies of Welfare” (monthly meetings, online), with Eric Hounshell (University of Lucerne) and Monika Wulz (ETH Zurich).

  2015–2021 Member of the research network “The Sociology of Economic Knowledge,” funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG).

  2017–2019 Member of the research network “The Sociology of Sociology,” funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG).

   

  University and Departmental Service

   

  12|2022–09|2024 Member of the Committee for the Best Final Theses on the Undergraduate, Graduate, and Postgraduate Levels, University of Lucerne.

  04|2016–09|2024 Co-convenor of the Colloquium of the Chair of Science Studies, University of Lucerne.

  2003–2005 Elected students’ representative (introductory workshops for first-year-students, member of appointment and curriculum committees), Department of Economics, University of Vienna.

   

  Professional Service

   

  since 06|2024 Member of the Committee for the Early Career Scholar Award, Journal of the History of Economic Thought (Cambridge University Press).

  since 09|2023 Member of the editorial board of the series “Cambridge Elements in the History of Economics,” Cambridge University Press.

  since 01|2023 Member of the Ethics Committee, History of Economics Society (HES).

  since 01|2021 Member of the advisory board of History of Political Economy (Duke Univ. Press).

  since 07|2019 Member of the editorial board of Journal of the History of Economic Thought

  (Cambridge University Press).

  2021 Head of the Commission of the Joseph J. Spengler Best Book Prize Committee, History of Economics Society (HES).

  2020 Member of the Commission of the Joseph J. Spengler Best Book Prize Committee, History of Economics Society (HES).

   

  
  Professional Memberships
  
  

  Gesellschaft für Geschichte der Wissenschaften, der Medizin und der Technik (GWMT) Schweizerische Gesellschaft für Geschichte (SGG)

  Historikerinnennetzwerk Schweiz

  
  Founding member of HELVHET (History of Economic Knowledge in Switzerland) Society for the History of Economics (HES)

  Society for the History of Recent Social Science (HISRESS)