The Arkwright Society 7th Industrial Revolution Conference

The Arkwright Society returns for their 7th Industrial Revolution Conference on Saturday 13th November via Zoom. The Industrial Revolution Conference is an annual event with a diverse range of topics and expert speakers.

This year, leading academics will discuss what triggered and sustained innovation in the first Industrial Revolution, with one talk focusing on modern entrepreneurship as a point of comparison.

Our first speaker, Professor Joel Mokyr, Department of Economics, Northwestern University, Illinois and Sackler Professorial Fellow at Tel Aviv University, will talk on the ‘Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution: A Neglected Nexus’, to show how the development of applied science interacted with industrial change and expansion.

Professor Emeritus John Styles of the University of Hertfordshire will discuss ‘Re-fashioning Industrial Revolution: Fibres, Fashion and Technical Innovation in British Cotton Textiles, 1630-1780’. He will consider how the progress from hand spinning to the Arkwright water frame and beyond was shaped by the changes in fashion in the 1760s-1770s.

Dr Gill Cookson, Visiting Research Fellow, School of History at Leeds University will address Innovation in the Time of Arkwright through a contextual approach to this period. This will offer a view of how Richard Arkwright’s career might have come to move from Barber and Wigmaker to Machine Maker and Industrial Mogul.

Dr Karoline Hutkova, London School of Economics will talk to us on The English East India Company’s Silk Enterprise in Bengal, 1750-1850. She will discuss how technology transfer to the Bengal silk industry came from the same Italian silk factories that influenced the Derby Silk Mill and subsequently the ‘Silk Town’ of Macclesfield, and the effect that had on the Bengal workers.

Professor Simon Mosey, Director of the Haydn Green Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Nottingham University will discuss ‘Building a legacy of ingenuity through entrepreneurial organisations’. This talk will help us to consider how the minds of the early innovators might have worked, by reviewing more recent innovation and entrepreneurship.

Tickets are priced at £20! Book your place today at www.cromfordmill.org.uk

There will be 20 free places for students if they email Tricia Trice at ttrice@arkwrightsociety.org.uk from their university email – on a first come first served basis!

For more information, please contact Tricia Trice on 07833 614942 or ttrice@arkwrightsociety.org.uk