Call for Applications: TURIN HUMANITIES PROGRAMME POSTGRADUATE SUMMER SCHOOL

Needs, Justice, and the Wealth of Nations: The Moral and Material Foundations of Political Economy in the European World (1500–1800)

17-19 SEPTEMBER, 2026

PALAZZO D’AZEGLIO, VIA PRINCIPE AMEDEO 34 – TURIN

APPLICATION DEADLINE: JUNE 15, 2026 10.00 PM (Italian/CET time)

The full details of the call can be found here (pdf).

The 2026 competition notice and the application form are available at https://www.fondazione1563.it/progetti/en-thp-summer-school-2026/

INTRODUCTION

Fondazione 1563 per l’Arte e la Cultura (hereinafter “Fondazione 1563”) has since 2013 supported research and advanced training in the field of the humanities.

In a wider effort to pursue this goal, in 2020 Fondazione 1563 launched the Turin Humanities Programme, a research initiative that allows junior scholars to work on interrelated research projects under the guidance of especially appointed Senior Fellows.

THP aims at promoting two-year research projects about relevant global history topics.

Under THP Fondazione 1563 launched a fifth (2025-27) call for applications for research on Rethinking the Origins of Political Economy in the European World: Needs, Justice, and the Wealth of Nations.

SUMMER SCHOOL 2026 AND ADMISSION REQUIREMENTS

The Turin Humanities Programme and Fondazione 1563 are pleased to invite doctoral students and early career researchers to submit their applications to the Summer School Needs, Justice, and the Wealth of Nations: The Moral and Material Foundations of Political Economy in the European World (1500–1800).

The emergence of political economy in early modern Europe was not the product of a single intellectual breakthrough, but of sustained attempts to reconcile material expansion with moral, legal, and political constraints. From the management of scarcity and subsistence to the governance of trade, empire, and population, early modern thinkers confronted a central question: how should wealth be created, distributed, and justified within society?

This Summer school explores the debates and policies that gave rise to political economy as a field of inquiry. Rather than treating it as a precursor to modern economics, participants will examine political economy as a historically situated set of practices and arguments, embedded in specific institutional, imperial, and ecological contexts. These took related yet disparate forms, ranging from the much-maligned shorthand of “mercantilism” to self-conscious traditions such as Cameralism, Colbertism, Physiocracy, and economia civile.

Bringing together approaches from intellectual history, economic history, and the history of science, the Summer School will focus on three interconnected axes:

1. Subsistence, Sociability, and the Problem of Order

How did early modern societies confront the tensions between scarcity, market dependence, and political stability? In what ways did concerns over provisioning, luxury, and commercial competition shape understandings of social order?

2. Production, Power, and the Uneven Wealth of Nations

Why did some nations prosper while others lagged behind? How did contemporaries understand the relationship between production, trade, and state power in a competitive international order?

3. Rights, Justice, and the Legitimacy of Economic Life

How were inequality, property, and market outcomes justified or contested within emerging frameworks of rights and justice? What moral limits were placed on economic activity, and by whom?

This Summer school approaches political economy not as a coherent body of thought, but as an evolving response to the material and political challenges of wealth creation, distribution, and contestation in a profoundly unequal world. From the management of subsistence to the cultivation of productive capacities, early modern debates were shaped by persistent efforts to understand why some societies flourished while others did not. Rather than reducing these efforts to a single tradition or trajectory, the programme reconstructs political economy as a plurality of practices and arguments articulated by artisans, merchants, philosophers, statesmen, and reformers across diverse institutional and imperial settings. In doing so, it highlights how different visions of economic life were grounded in concrete strategies of governance, production, and social organization. At a time when concerns about inequality and geopolitical rivalry have resurfaced with urgency, revisiting these debates does not provide easy answers, but it does remind us that the tensions we face have a history—and that economic ideas have long helped shape them.

English will be the default language of the Summer School.

The programme is open to doctoral students and early-career researchers working on the history of political economy and related fields.

Participants will engage in intensive seminars, collaborative discussions, and close readings of primary sources.