Welcome to the website for the Winton Centre for Financial History at Newnham College, which was established in July 2009 with a generous grant of seed money from Winton Capital Management.

Despite the resurgence of interest in the history of financial capitalism sparked by the current global economic crisis, our centre and the Winton Institute for Monetary at Oxford are the only two dedicated research centres for financial or monetary history in British Isles. With distinguished Faculties of History and of Economics and with a business school that boasts an impressive endowment to fund research in modern finance, Cambridge offers the ideal location for such a venture.

The Centre’s core mission is to facilitate cutting-edge research in financial history, to encourage its application to economic theory and to public policy, and to explore rigorous and lasting platforms for the dissemination of the fruits of research in financial history. The Centre not only serves the Cambridge community as one of the seven constituent centres of Cambridge Finance, but also hopes to bring together financial historians at British and Irish institutions to work on collaborative ventures. In Cambridge, we participate in the History Faculty's Economic and Social History sub-group, where we offer an MPhil paper on financial history. We always welcome enquiries from postgraduate research students about affiliating with the centre.

The re-development of the European State Finance Database and our conference this past March on ‘Questioning “Credible Commitment”’ offer examples of our approach to interdisciplinary work in financial history. We are also currently compiling a global register of financial historians. If you would like to join our register or the mailing list, please contact the director.