Dr Sabine Schneider

I am the Rank-Manning Research Fellow at New College, Oxford, and a member of the Management Committee of the Oxford Centre for Economic and Social History. My research focuses on international economic history since 1800 and the history of state-building, diplomacy, and financial globalization.

Before joining Oxford, I completed my PhD and MPhil at the University of Cambridge, where my research was supported by scholarships from the Economic and Social Research Council and St John’s College. My PhD examined the creation and politics of the gold standard in Imperial Germany, and was awarded Cambridge’s Ellen McArthur Prize. I previously read for a BA in History at the University of Durham, where I was a Vice-Chancellor’s Scholar for Academic Excellence and recipient of the Thompson and History Dissertation Prizes. Recent publications include an article in The Economic History Review, on Bank of England crisis management, and a chapter in the edited volume Money & Markets: Essays in Honour of Martin Daunton.

See page on New College website

Research Interests

• History of International Political Economy
• History of Foreign Policy and Economic Diplomacy
• Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Economic Thought
• Anglo-German Economic Relations since c. 1800

I am currently completing War, Finance & Diplomacy: Germany and the Politics of the International Gold Standard, 1834-1914. The study examines the political economy of Germany’s path to monetary union, from the creation of the Zollverein in 1834 to the outbreak of the First World War. Based on collections from over twenty archives, the book investigates Germany’s transition to a national gold currency, and the reforms’ far-reaching impact on the country’s financial and trading relations with Britain, Europe, and Asia. The doctoral research on which the book is based was a Finalist for the 2021 Thirsk-Feinstein Prize of the Economic History Society. My second book project is a global history of gold standards, from their origins in Georgian Britain to the post-war transition to floating exchange rates.

I have coordinated the ECR Development Seminar at the Oxford Centre for Economic and Social History, and have a keen interest in the relevance of history to public policy. In 2020, I convened a seminar roundtable at New College on Central Banking and International Cooperation: Lessons from the Great Recession and the Covid-19 Crisis. While at Cambridge, I co-organised Credit, Currency & Commerce, a two-day conference which explored new directions for historical research into financial and monetary policy.