New Assistant Professor of Quantitative Economic History
Economist Robert Stelter investigates the long-term interplay of economic and demographic trends. The President’s Board of the University of Basel has appointed him as the Faculty of Business and Economics’s new assistant professor of Quantitative Economic History (Cliometrics). The five-year professorship is financed by the Max Geldner Foundation.
09 June 2020
Dr. Robert Stelter is currently working as a postdoc at Leuphana University Lüneburg and as visiting scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock. He is set to take up his new position on 1 September 2020. He will be the second in succession to be awarded the Max Geldner assistant professorship in Quantitative Economic History (Cliometrics).
Focus on population economics
Robert Stelter was born in Waren an der Müritz (Germany) in 1983 and studied economics and social sciences at the University of Rostock. In 2016, he earned a joint doctorate at the University of Rostock in Germany and the Belgian Université catholique de Louvain. He has been involved with the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research since 2015, initially as a doctoral student and then as a postdoc. During the summer semester 2020, he will also be working as a postdoc at Leuphana University Lüneburg.
Stelter’s focal areas include historical population economics. His research examines births, deaths mortality and migration in a historical context. At its core is the question of how their dynamics can be explained and what contribution they have made to economic development – particularly before and during the Industrial Revolution.
Max Geldner Foundation
The Basel-based Max Geldner Foundation is providing CHF 825,000 in funding for the five-year assistant professorship, strengthening the field of economic history within the Faculty of Business and Economics. The foundation’s professorship allows the faculty to improve the staff-student ratio and promote early career researchers.
Further information
Iris Mickein, University of Basel, Communication, phone +41 61 207 24 25, email: iris.mickein@unibas.ch
