Eli F. Heckscher Lecture 2026 with Sheilagh Ogilvie

Join us for the 2026 Eli F. Heckscher Lecture with Professor Sheilagh Ogilvie on Thursday 29 October at the Stockholm School of Economics.

Sheilagh Ogilvie is Chichele Professor of Economic History at All Souls College, University of Oxford, and a Fellow of the British Academy. Her lecture will explore why harmful institutions persist, drawing on the history of European guilds from 1000 to 1880.

Ogilvie studies how institutions have shaped economic development and the lives of ordinary people in Europe from the Middle Ages onwards. Her award-winning book The European Guilds: An Economic Analysis (2019) examines thousands of craft guilds and asks why these costly institutions survived for so long. Her latest book, Controlling Contagion (2025), investigates how societies have dealt with epidemics from the Black Death to COVID-19. Her current research also covers serfdom, labour markets and state capacity.

Date and venue

Date: Thursday 29 October 2026
Time: 17:00–18:45 (Stockholm time)
Venue: Stockholm School of Economics, Sveavägen 65, Stockholm
Room: Aulan (the auditorium)

Register for the lecture. The registration form is in Swedish.

Read about Professor Sheilagh Ogilvie at All Souls College.

About the Eli F. Heckscher Lecture

The lecture is organised annually by the Institute for Economic and Business History Research (EHFF) at the Stockholm School of Economics and the Ratio Institute, in honour of Professor Eli F. Heckscher and his work. Each year, a distinguished economist or researcher is invited to speak. Previous lecturers include scholars who later received the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, among them the 2024 laureate James A. Robinson.

Eli F. Heckscher was an economist and economic historian at the Stockholm School of Economics. His work focused on economic theory and methods, Swedish economic history and institutional economic analysis. He is best known for developing the Heckscher–Ohlin theorem in international economics together with Bertil Ohlin.

Explore previous Heckscher Lectures.