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Sharon Ann Murphy

Providence College, Professor of History


19th c. US, Financial history, Slavery, Banking, Insurance
Women in Business History

Sharon Ann Murphy is a professor of history at Providence College in Providence, RI. 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 newest book (forthcoming 2023 with the University of Chicago Press) is currently titled Banking on Slavery: Financing Southern Expansion in the Antebellum U.S. It investigates the critical role played by southern banks in supporting and promoting the system of slavery on the frontier, particularly through the use of enslaved lives as loan collateral. 

Service to the BHC


Past-President on Board 2025 - 2026
Budget Committee 2022 - 2026 [Chair 2023 - 2024]
Nominating Committee 2024 - 2025 [Chair 2024 - 2025]
Past President 2024 - 2025
Executive Committee 2022 - 2024
President-Elect 2022 - 2023
Associate Editor of Enterprise & Society 2015 - 2022
Hagley Book Prize Committee 2020 - 2021
Nominating Committee 2018 - 2020
Hagley Book Prize Committee 2017 - 2018
Associate Editor of Enterprise & Society 2011 - 2015
Electronic Media Oversight Committee 2010 - 2013 [Chair 2012 - 2013]
Board of Trustees 2010 - 2013
Kerr Prize Committee 2009 - 2012 [Chair 2010 - 2011]
Emerging Scholars Committee 2008 - 2011

Prizes and Grants from the BHC


Hagley Prize in Business History, 2012
K. Austin Kerr Prize, 2005
Harold F. Williamson Prize, 2020

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