PC’s Sharon Ann Murphy Wins Harold F. Williamson Prize in Business History
April 8, 2020 – Providence College (PC) today announced that Dr. Sharon Ann Murphy was named the winner of the Harold F. Williamson Prize in Business History. The award was presented at the annual meeting of the Business History Conference in Charlotte, NC on March 12-14, 2020.
Dr. Murphy is a professor of history at Providence College. She is the author of Investing in Life: Insurance in Antebellum America (2010, Johns Hopkins University Press), winner of the 2012 Hagley Prize for the best book in business history, and Other People’s Money: How Banking Worked in the Early American Republic (2017, Johns Hopkins University Press). Her latest projects are an investigation of the public perception of banks around the Panic of 1819, and an examination of the relationship between banking and enslavement in the nineteenth century United States.
The Harold F. Williamson Prize in Business History was first presented in 1990; it is awarded every two years. The prize was established to honor the memory of one of the founding members of the Business History Conference. Hal Williamson, who taught at Northwestern University for many years, trained dozens of graduate students, and served as president of the BHC in 1974.
The prize is awarded to an individual “at mid-career” who has made significant contributions to the teaching and writing of business history. The prize consists of a medallion and $500.
Founded in 1917, Providence College is the only college or university in the United States administered by the Dominican Friars. The Catholic, liberal arts college has an undergraduate enrollment of approximately 4,000 students and offers degrees in 52 academic majors and 38 minors. Since 1997, Providence College consistently has been ranked among the top five regional universities in the North according to U.S. News & World Report’s “America’s Best Colleges.”
