The Turin Humanities Programme and Fondazione 1563 are pleased to invite doctoral students and early career researchers to submit their applications to the Summer School Needs, Justice, and the Wealth of Nations: The Moral and Material Foundations of Political Economy in the European World (1500–1800).

The emergence of political economy in early modern Europe was not the product of a single intellectual breakthrough, but of sustained attempts to reconcile material expansion with moral, legal, and political constraints. From the management of scarcity and subsistence to the governance of trade, empire, and population, early modern thinkers confronted a central question: how should wealth be created, distributed, and justified within society?

This Summer school explores the debates and policies that gave rise to political economy as a field of inquiry. Rather than treating it as a precursor to modern economics, participants will examine political economy as a historically situated set of practices and arguments, embedded in specific institutional, imperial, and ecological contexts. These took related yet disparate forms, ranging from the much-maligned shorthand of “mercantilism” to self-conscious traditions such as Cameralism, Colbertism, Physiocracy, and economia civile.

Bringing together approaches from intellectual history, economic history, and the history of science, the Summer School will focus on three interconnected axes:

1. Subsistence, Sociability, and the Problem of Order
How did early modern societies confront the tensions between scarcity, market dependence, and political stability? In what ways did concerns over provisioning, luxury, and commercial competition shape understandings of social order?

2. Production, Power, and the Uneven Wealth of Nations
Why did some nations prosper while others lagged behind? How did contemporaries understand the relationship between production, trade, and state power in a competitive international order?

3. Rights, Justice, and the Legitimacy of Economic Life
How were inequality, property, and market outcomes justified or contested within emerging frameworks of rights and justice? What moral limits were placed on economic activity, and by whom?

This Summer school approaches political economy not as a coherent body of thought, but as an evolving response to the material and political challenges of wealth creation, distribution, and contestation in a profoundly unequal world. From the management of subsistence to the cultivation of productive capacities, early modern debates were shaped by persistent efforts to understand why some societies flourished while others did not. Rather than reducing these efforts to a single tradition or trajectory, the programme reconstructs political economy as a plurality of practices and arguments articulated by artisans, merchants, philosophers, statesmen, and reformers across diverse institutional and imperial settings. In doing so, it highlights how different visions of economic life were grounded in concrete strategies of governance, production, and social organization. At a time when concerns about inequality and geopolitical rivalry have resurfaced with urgency, revisiting these debates does not provide easy answers, but it does remind us that the tensions we face have a history—and that economic ideas have long helped shape them.

English will be the default language of the Summer School.

The programme is open to doctoral students and early-career researchers working on the history of political economy and related fields.

Participants will engage in intensive seminars, collaborative discussions, and close readings of primary sources.

The Summer School programme includes lectures by international speakers to be announced, research presentations by the Junior Fellows of the Turin Humanities Programme, feedback sessions, and roundtable discussions.

To foster dialogue between senior and junior scholars, the 2026 Summer School offers participants a unique opportunity to contribute to broader discussions on needs, justice, and political economy in the early modern world.

Successful applicants will also have the opportunity to present their work in panel sessions, contributing directly to ongoing debates on the moral and material foundations of political economy.

To apply for the Summer School, prospective participants should submit a brief academic CV (max. 2 pages), an abstract of the research they wish to present (max. 400 words) and a short essay on why they would like to attend the Summer School (max. 200 words).

Please, upload these materials within the application form that can be found on the website of Fondazione 1563 at the following link: www.fondazione1563.it/application-form-thp-summer-school/ by 10.00 PM (Italian/CET time) of June 15, 2026.

The Summer School will be activated only with a minimum of 10 participants; a maximum of 12 participants is allowed.

The participation in the Summer School is free to all Italian and International postgraduate students and early career researchers.

Travelling expenses to and from Torino and accommodation expenses in Torino will be borne by the participants.

Upon acceptance of the participation in the Summer School, the participants will be asked to confirm their participation in the social events proposed by Fondazione 1563.

For information, please contact the organizers at info@fondazione1563.it

The candidates will be selected based on their resumes and the relevance of their intended contributions to the general subject of the Summer School.

They will be informed of the result of the selection by mid-July via the email address they included in the application form.

Successful applicants will receive the attendance form that will have to be signed for acceptance and returned, on pain of forfeiture, within 5 working days starting from the date of the communication.

Fondazione 1563 reserves the right to suspend, modify or cancel this selection procedure or the Summer School at any moment at its incontestable discretion, without that being in any way for the Candidates a right or a demand to claim any refund, compensation or reimbursement.