A Social Question before the Social Question: Addressing Poverty in Enlightenment Europe

22-23 October 2026

Venue: Somerville College, Oxford (Margaret Thatcher Centre)

Convenors: Damiano Bardelli (Voltaire Foundation, Oxford) and Matilde Cazzola (DiSCi, Bologna and mpilhlt), with Joanna Innes (Faculty of History Oxford)

THURSDAY, 22 October

13:30 Welcome and Introduction

14:00 Session 1 – Rural Poverty

Joanna Innes (University of Oxford): The Invention of Rural Poverty in England, from 1760

Aris Della Fontana (Università della Svizzera italiana): ‘Combien de pauvres elle sauveroit de l’indigence?’: Small-Scale Agriculture as an Antidote to Rural Poverty in Late Eighteenth-Century France – 

15:20 Session 2 – Poverty and Society

Nicholas O’Neill (Arizona State University): Laissez Faire, Laissez Manger: The Economics of Boisguilbert’s Antipoverty

Masano Yamashita (University of Colorado Boulder): Accidental Poverty and Merit

Jacopo Bonasera (Gerda Henkel Stiftung): Population, Luxury and Poverty: The Political Economy of James Steuart

Marek Maj (European University Institute): Making the Poor ‘Useful’ in Late Eighteenth-Century Cracow

FRIDAY, 23 October

9:00 Session 3 – In the Parish

Gabi Wüthrich (Universität Zürich): Poor and Power in the Parish: Bargaining for a Collective Poor Relief Strategy during the 1771 Famine

Rūta Miškinytė (Vilnius University): Between Intentions and Practice: Dealing with Poverty in a Rural Lithuanian Parish

Ellen Gallimore (University of York): Memories of the Medieval Church: Critiques of Parish Poor Relief and Tithe Reform in Early-Nineteenth-Century England

11:00 Session 4 – Between Assistance and Confinement

Julie Marfany (Durham University): ‘Since it is the Spirit of the Present Government to Favour Hospitals and Workhouses’: Conflicts over Poor Relief in Eighteenth-Century Spain

Nathalie Dahn-Singh (Université de Lausanne): Materiality and the Confinement of the Poor in Eighteenth-Century Switzerland

Adrien Schwartz (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne): A Social Problem and a Financial Conundrum: Funding the Care of Foundlings in Eighteenth-Century France

13:30 Session 5 – Reforming Poor Relief

Laurence Fontaine (EHESS): Agreements and Disagreements among Reformist Elites in Addressing Poverty: The 1777 Châlons Competition on ‘How to Eradicate Begging by Making Beggars Useful to the State without Making them Unhappy’

Francesca Ferrando (Università di Verona): Reforming Poor Relief in Eighteenth-Century Genoa: Ideas, Practices and Female Benefaction

Damiano Bardelli (University of Oxford): Work and Education: Reforming Poor Relief in Late Eighteenth-Century Switzerland

Matilde Cazzola (Università di Bologna): Claiming Philanthropy from Below: British Radicalism and the Ragged-Trousered Lovers of Mankind

16:00 Concluding discussion

Supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation, the Max Planck Institute, and the Voltaire Foundation.