Léa Meyer

Léa Meyer is a Ph.D. candidate in Economic and Social History at the Paul Bairoch Institute of Economic History of the University of Geneva , under the supervision of Prof. Mary O’Sullivan. She obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Economic History and Political Economy in 2021 and a Master’s degree in Political Economy of Capitalism in 2023, both from the University of Geneva. She is currently a Visiting PhD Researcher at the University of York, hosted by Prof. Teresa da Silva Lopes.

Her doctoral research examines the emergence of a global wool market between 1764 and 1850, a defining moment in the globalization of this commodity, when an increasingly competitive international market for wool arose in Europe, notably with Australia’s rise as a major supplier of raw wool to the expanding British textile industry.

Moving between macro-level trade dynamics and micro-historical firm data, her research examines how merchant capital contributed to the integration of commodity chains through the sourcing, financing, and distribution of raw wool. More broadly, she is interested in the organization and dynamics of commodity chains and their relationship to the distribution of value within and across states. Her research combines public sources, including parliamentary records, with private archives, using qualitative and quantitative analyses of merchant correspondence and accounting books to reconstruct commercial networks, profits, and flows of capital.

Her broader research interests include the history of capitalism and merchant capitalism, global commodity chains, the political economy of trade and fiscal policy, and Spanish, French and British imperial economic history. Alongside her doctoral research, she has worked as a research assistant for Prof. Simon Hug in the Department of Political Science and International Relations at the University of Geneva since 2024, contributing to projects on political polarization, recorded voting in the European Parliament, and human rights. She also holds a Certificate of Open Studies in Applied Data Science from the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), with a particular interest in historical data analysis and visualization.