Monetary History
Non-Governmental Currencies
Corporate History
Economic Daily Lives
Material Culture
History Education
Email: idit.benor@mail.huji.ac.il
Current Projects:
Idit is currently working on a project entitled Money, Sovereignty and Corporate power: British East India Company Coinage in the Early Modern World. The project explores how corporate issued coinage played a role in the establishment of the BEIC’s sovereignty in India from the 17th-19th century. Idit’s dissertation, Non-governmental Monies in Early Modern England: A Social, Political and Material Culture Analysis, examined currencies issued by the private sector that were used for daily economic activity over long periods of time. Her work emphasizes how the government’s relationship with and control of low denominational coinage changed throughout the early modern period, symbolically and practically. Thus, showing how small change that was in ordinary men’s and women’s pockets signified large monetary shifts in the history of England.
Curriculum Vitae
Fellowships and Grants
2021-2025 Martin Buber Society of Fellows Postdoctoral Fellowship Hebrew University of Jerusalem
2020-2021- Markets, Ethics and the Law Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, Tel Aviv University
2017-2020- Azrieli Graduate Fellowship for Academic Excellence and Leadership
2016-2019- Mandel Scholion Interdisciplinary Research Center in the Humanities and Jewish Studies Graduate Fellowship
2014-2018- George L. Mosse Graduate Fellowship of Excellence in Historical Research, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Prizes
Yaakov Talmon Prize for PhD Students, History Department, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Education
2021- PhD, History Department, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
2015-6- George L. Mosse Graduate Student Exchange Fellowship, University of Wisconsin, Madison
2015- MA, History Department, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
2010- BA, History, Politics and Government, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
Publications
Peer-reviewed articles
“Women’s Work on Small Change: Privately Issued Currency by Women in mid17th Century London” (under review)
Presentations
Panels Co-Organized
2018- “Cultures of Calculation” Panel, Annual North American Conference of British Studies (Providence, RI) Lecture entitled: “The Big Problem of Small Change: Privately-Minted Coinage in Seventeenth-Century England”
Papers Presented
2021- “Corporate Money in the Early Modern Period: East India Company Coinage”, Conference of the Israeli Economic History Association, Annual Meeting of Money, Credit and Banking Forum
2021- Presentation of Dissertation at the History Department Colloquium, Haifa University (invited talk)
2018- “Non-Governmental Monies: Extraordinary or Mundane?”, International Conference Hebrew University of Jerusalem “Extra-Ordinary: Unique and Common Artifacts as Social Actors”
2018- “Small Money during Great Revolutions: Privately Minted Money during the English Civil War”, Conference of the Israeli Economic History Association, Annual Meeting of Money, Credit and Banking forum
2017- “Local Money: On the Thin Line between Legal and Forged Money in Early Modern England”, Israeli Economic History Association conference “What is Money?”
2016- “The Materiality of Money: Small Change in Early Modern England”, Israeli Historical Society Graduate Student Workshop with Prof. Kit French (invited talk)
2016- “Hands on History: Digitization of Jewish Cemeteries as an Educational Tool”Center of Jewish Studies Seminar, University of Wisconsin, Madison (invited talk)