Grants & Research opportunities

Democratic Politics of Central Banking Working Group

As an economic institution, money straddles financial markets and technocratic expertise. As a political institution, it is the physical instantiation of our interdependence and our collective power, we all use it, desire it, and rely on it. The democratic politics of governing money consequently requires a careful disentangling of questions of legitimacy, power, and expertise that must itself combine empirical tools, legal institutions, and normative judgment. This research group fosters a conversation among a diverse set of scholars aimed at developing a frame of analysis that can cope with both the technical and the normative demands of collectively governing money.

Early American Money Working Group

Bringing together historians, economists, political scientists and scholars across the sciences and humanities, the Early American Money Working Group takes an interdisciplinary approach to the history of American money in the Colonial, Revolutionary, and Civil War eras. It recognizes money not as a fixed entity but as a category of analysis that can reorganize understandings of sovereignty, politics and governance. It is also interested in questions about the cultural construction of money and monetary value and the ways in which diverse groups of Americans have understood the relationship between the organization of money and society. The workshop meets on a monthly basis to discuss works in progress and readings on the history of money.

For more information or to join the mailing list, please contact Ann Daly at ann_daly@brown.edu.