Sharon Murphy
Sharon Ann Murphy is a professor of history and department chair at Providence College. Her latest book, Banking on Slavery: Financing Southern Expansion in the Antebellum United States was published in 2023 with Chicago University Press. It investigates the critical role played by southern commercial banks in supporting and promoting the system of slavery on the southern frontier, particularly through the use of enslaved lives as loan collateral. She is also the author of Investing in Life: Insurance in Antebellum America, 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. She has been an associate editor of Enterprise and Society: The International Journal of Business History since 2011.
Service to the BHC
Prizes and Grants from the BHC
Recent Conference Participation
| 2026 BHC Meeting:
Presenter, "MetLife's 'Better Health Campaign'"
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| 2025 BHC meeting:
Chair, Insurance Archives: An Untapped Source for Business Historians Discussant, Banking and Finance in the Turn of the Century United States |
| 2024 BHC Meeting:
Chair, Champions of the Common Good: Insurances and the Process of Shaping Community Interests |
| 2023 BHC Meeting:
Chair, Divine Business Discussant, Divine Business |
| 2022 BHC Meeting :
Chair, Experiments in Finance |
| 2021 BHC Virtual Meeting:
Chair, Money and Politics in Early America Discussant, Money and Politics in Early America |
| 2020 BHC Meeting:
Presenter, "Gone to Texas: Deadbeat Debtors and Their Enslaved Property"
Chair, The Political Economy of Commodity Money Discussant, The Political Economy of Commodity Money |