Per Hansen

Presentation

I have been professor of business history at Copenhagen Business School since 2002. Since my student years in the 1980s, I have focused on economic and financial history of the 19th and 20th centuries with a special interest in financial crises and the role of banks and central banks in the interwar period as a time of significant uncertainty and transformation. Over time my approach has developed from economic history into a broader contextual view of the role of business, finance and financiers in society. My thinking has shifted towards a more culturally based understanding of finance and the economy in history. In particular, I have contributed to introducing narrative and cultural approaches in my field. In addition to financial history, I have published on the business history of Danish modern furniture design. Today, I am interested in how institutions, culture, business and the economy interact, and how societal crises and periods of radical uncertainty contribute to transformations of capitalism and within different fields.

In 2020 and 2021, I was a member of the Independent Research Fund Denmark | Humanities, and I was president of the US-based Business History Conference from 2013-2014. I have given keynote talks and won several prizes for my research, most recently the 2018 Hagley Prize for the best book in Business History. I was a visiting scholar at Rutgers University (1997-1998), UC Berkeley (2004-2005), Harvard Business School (fall semester 2005) and Stern School of Business, NYU (spring semesters 2009 and 2011), where I have also taught several courses. Over the years, I have written more than 100 articles for Danish national newspapers, appeared on television and radio numerous times, and contributed to a number of podcasts.

Primary research areas

• Business history
• Financial history
• Economic history
• Design history

Selected publications

• På glidebanen til den bitre ende. Dansk bankvæsen i krise, 1920-1933, Odense 1996 (disp.) (On Route to Disaster. Danish Banking in Crisis, 1920-1933)
• Da sparekassernes mistede deres uskyld. En historie om sparekasser og samfund i opbrud, 1965-1990, Odense 2001 (When the savings banks lost their innocence. A history of savings banks and society under change)
• Den Danske Bank, København 1997 (A History of Danske Bank)
• “Making Sense of Financial Crisis and Scandal. A Danish Bank Failure in the Era of Finance Capitalism." Forthcoming in Enterprise & Society 2012
• 40) ”Cooperate or Free-Ride? The Scandinavian Central Banks, Bank for International Settlements, and the Austrian Financial Crisis of 1931.” Scandinavian Journal of History, vol. 37 no. 1, 2012, pp. 87-107.