Ellen Nye

Ellen Nye is an economic historian specializing in the history of political economy, globalization, and early modern empires. She earned her PhD in History from Yale University, an MPhil in Social and Economic History from the University of Cambridge, and a AB in History and Middle Eastern Studies from Dartmouth College. Before starting as an assistant professor at Purdue, she served as faculty fellow at Harvard’s Charles Warren Center and a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies.

Her current book project, Empires of Obligation: Monetary Governance in a Globalizing World, examines the relationship between interstate private credit and domestic public finance in early modern England and the Ottoman Empire. Guided by archival research in Ottoman Turkish and several European languages across fifteen archives in five countries, Empires of Obligation revises nationally bound narratives about financial revolution, state formation, and capitalism to appreciate different, intersecting responses to the problems posed by increasingly global trade. Her dissertation on which the book is based won the Business History Conference’s Krooss Prize for the best dissertation in business history, Yale’s Hans Gatzke Prize for the best dissertation in European history, and honorable mention for the World History Association Dissertation Prize.

Nye’s research has been generously supported by the Fulbright Commission, the Council of American Overseas Research Centers, and the American Research Institute in Turkey, among others. Her writing has appeared in the Journal for Early Modern History, EH.net, and The Economist’s 1843 Magazine. During the 2024-25 academic year, she will be a fellow in the history of capitalism at the Harvard Business School. Please get in touch at emnye@purdue.edu.