Upon receiving the Doctor Honoris Causa degree at the EUI Degree Conferring Ceremony on 17 June, 2022, Professor Maxine Berg shares feeling delighted and thankful to the Institute for this honour. "I have such happy associations with the EUI," she shares, referring to the many collaborations over the years between members of the EUI History department and the History department of the University of Warwick, UK. Professor Berg mentions she has "learned enormous amounts from the faculty and researchers during three visits of several months each in the years between 2015 and 2018," adding that she greatly admires "the rich teaching programme and research dynamism of the EUI."
The degree of Doctor Honoris Causa of the EUI is awarded annually to distinguished scholars who have considerably contributed during their academic career in the field of economics, law, political and social sciences, and history. Nominations are approved by the Academic Council of the EUI.
In reacting to the 2022 conferral, Head of the EUI History Department, Professor Giorgio Riello says: "The Department of History is delighted that this year’s Honorary Degree has been awarded to Professor Maxine Berg from the University of Warwick." In addition, Professor Riello reflects on her remarkable career, mentioning that "Professor Berg has been amongst the most inspiring scholars in our field. Her work has profoundly reshaped economic history and, in more recent years, the field of global history. Many of our researchers have benefitted from her innovative scholarship, and the new perspectives that it has provided for the discipline of History."
After obtaining her DPhil at Oxford University, Maxine Berg started her career at the University of Warwick, where she founded and directed the Warwick’s Global History and Culture Centre. Her research examines the global history of trade, commerce, material culture, and knowledge during the early modern period, with a particular focus on relationships between Asia and Europe. Her publications and projects, such as Luxury and Pleasure in Eighteenth-Century Britain (2005), have done much to stimulate global approaches to economic and British/European history during the early modern period. She has been a key historian in articulating global historical approaches, as demonstrated in her edited volume Writing the History of the Global: Challenges for the Twenty-first Century (2013), and through her ERC-funded project ‘Europe’s Asian Centuries: Trading Eurasia 1600-1830’ (2010-2014).