Staff profile

Julie Marfany works on European economic and social history, with a special focus on Spain. She is particularly interested in the question of divergence within Europe and to what extent economic and social change in southern Europe has been distinct from that of northern Europe. Her book An alternative transition to capitalism? Land, proto-industry and population growth in Catalonia, c.1680-1829 investigated why Catalonia industrialised ahead of other areas of southern Europe, and how economic and social change was experienced at the level of the household and family. Her current research explores family, kinship and poor relief in southern Europe. She has broad research interests in the history of the family and household, wealth, poverty and living standards, population growth and the origins of the industrial revolution. She has had research fellowships and teaching posts at Cambridge and Oxford, and is editor of the journal Continuity and Change.

• Poverty, poor relief and charity
• Family and household
• Living standards and wellbeing
• Particular focus on southern Europe

Authored book

• Marfany, J. (2012). Land, proto-industry and population in Catalonia, c.1680-1829. An alternative transition to capitalism?. Ashgate Publishing

Chapter in book

• Carbonell-Esteller, M., Marfany, J., & Pujadas-Mora, J. M. (2022). Migration and the Household Economy of the Poor in Catalonia, c.1762-1803. In B. Zucca Micheletto (Ed.), Gender and Migration in Historical Perspective (323-353). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99554-6_10
• Marfany, J. (2014). Family and welfare in early modern Europe: a north-south comparison. In C. Briggs, P. Kitson, & S. Thompson (Eds.), Population, Welfare and Economic Change in Britain, 1290-1834. Boydell & Brewer
• Marfany, J. (2013). Proto-industrialisation, property rights and the land market in Catalonia, 18th and early 19th centuries. In P. Schofield, & G. Béaur (Eds.), Property rights, the land market and economic change. Brepols Publishers
• Marfany, J., Congost, R., & Ferrer, L. (2012). The formation of new households and social change in a single heir system: the Catalan case, 17th to 19th centuries. In P. Pozsgai, & A.-L. Head-König (Eds.), Inheritance practices, marriage strategies and household formation in European rural societies. Brepols Publishers
• Marfany, J. (2010). Els canvis en el costum: Igualada en el segle XVIII. In R. R. Massana (Ed.), Els capítols matrimonials. Una font per a la història social. Girona: CCG edicions

Journal Article

• Marfany, J. (2024). Marginal and Obsolete? Rural Hospitals in Early Modern Europe: A Case Study of Catalonia. Social History of Medicine, https://doi.org/10.1093/shm/hkae018
• Marfany, J. (2018). Adapting to new markets: the income and expenditure of a Catalan peasant family, 1686 to 1812. Agricultural History Review, 66(1), 18-42
• Carbonell-Esteller, M., & Marfany, J. (2017). Gender, life cycle, and family ‘strategies’ among the poor: the Barcelona workhouse, 1762–1805. The Economic History Review, 70(3), 810-836. https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.12425
• Marfany, J. (2011). Was there an industrious revolution in Catalonia?
• Marfany, J. (2010). Is it still helpful to talk about proto-industrialisation? Some suggestions from a Catalan case study. The Economic History Review, 63(4),
• Marfany, J. (2006). Choices and constraints: marriage and inheritance in eighteenth and early nineteenth-century Catalonia. Continuity and Change, 21(1),
• Marfany, J. (2005). Las crisis de mortalidad en una comunidad catalana, Igualada, 1680-1819
• Marfany, J. (2004). ‘Casarse en edad apropriada’: edat al matrimoni i estratègies matrimonials a Catalunya, 1680-1829