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Nick Fitzhenry

@nickfitzhenry.bsky.social

Postdoc at CAMPOP & King's College, Cambridge PhD in Economic History, LSE. nicholasfitzhenry.co.uk Research: death, disease & doctors during Apartheid Methods: Applied econometrics & historical demography. Teaching: Industrial Rev., History of Middle East

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Nick Fitzhenry@nickfitzhenry.bsky.social · 2mo ago

It is said that the birth rate is in decline, that the French population is becoming smaller, that this is a sign of decadence ... foreigners invade us and on our soil come to take the place of our nationals. — Maria Deraismes writing … at the end of the 19th century!

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Alice Roberts@profaliceroberts.bsky.social · 3mo ago

This is an absolutely stunning piece of research and visualisation! Tracking letters from one merchant’s company in the 14th-15th century. He was trading spices from the eastern med and importing English wool into Tuscany. Click on the link for an interactive map!

Stephen Gadd@docuracy.co.uk · 3mo ago

✉️ Explore 145,000 medieval merchant letters as a live map: the correspondence network of Francesco di Marco Datini (c.1363–1412), spanning Florence to Barcelona to North Africa. Visualise routes, travel times & seasonality. docuracy.github.io/datini/ #DigitalHumanities #MedievalHistory

A dark-themed interactive map of the medieval western Mediterranean showing 14th-century merchant letter routes as curved arcs coloured from cyan (fast, 0–5 days) through yellow to red (30+ days). Short land routes between Tuscan cities glow cyan; longer sea routes to Barcelona and Majorca burn orange and red, revealing the unpredictability of medieval maritime travel. (299 characters) Long (accessible description for screen readers / figure caption): Screenshot of the Datini Letters Geospatial Explorer in Travel Time mode. A dark basemap of the western Mediterranean is overlaid with curved arc lines connecting pairs of cities in the Datini merchant network. Arc colour encodes average letter delivery time on a gradient from cyan (near-instant, 0–5 days) through green and yellow (one to two weeks) to orange and deep red-magenta (more than 30 days). Dense clusters of fast cyan arcs radiate from Florence and Pisa across Tuscany, reflecting the reliable day-or-two land post. Arcs reaching westward to Barcelona, Valencia, and Palma de Majorca shift to orange and red, capturing the slower and far more variable sea routes that could take anywhere from a week to several months. City nodes are shown as circles: pink for the main Datini fondacos (Pisa, Florence, Barcelona, Genoa, Valencia, Majorca) and blue for correspondent cities. A sidebar on the left shows the Travel Time mode is selected, with a cyan-to-red colour legend and a filter slider for minimum letters per route.
Jonas Schöley@jschoeley.com · 3mo ago

demoscapes.org is a visual atlas of demographic surfaces hosted at @mpidr.bsky.social. It is also my passion project growing out of my 2016 human mortality database explorer. Did you publish something containing Lexis surfaces? Consider reaching out and having your work featured on the site.

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Leah Abrams@leahrabrams.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Check out @jschoeley.com's very cool project: Demoscapes! It now features interactive Lexis surfaces based on our recent PNAS paper tracking cohort trends in major causes of death in the US. It's (to us data lovers) so fun! demoscapes.org/collections/...

Nick Fitzhenry@nickfitzhenry.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Bakery infested by crickets or cockroaches — woodcut from Olaus Magnus, Historia de Gentibus Septentrionalibus (Rome, 1555). Reproduced in the Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, 2 June 1924, for an article on the antiquity and life history of the cockroach.

Black-and-white woodcut of a 16th-century bakery interior. On the left, a woman in a long dress and headcloth carries a long plank on her shoulder. In the centre, a male baker in a long tunic and cap uses a long-handled peel to slide loaves into a domed brick oven. Loaves rest on a sloping board behind him. Swarms of insects — crickets or cockroaches — pour from cracks in the wall and ceiling above the oven. To the right, shelves hold pots and jars, and a candle burns in a wall niche. Hatched lines shade the walls and floor.
Nick Fitzhenry@nickfitzhenry.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Glad to be helping putting this together. Do come along if you are in Cambridge.

Cambridge University History Faculty@camhistory.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Last chance to register: major conference celebrating 250 years of 'The Wealth of Nations': the most famous text in the history of political economy and economics. Leading historians and economists will assess its legacy & ask what it means for the next century. Free, open to public, link below ⬇️⬇️

Last chance to register: landmark conference to mark 250 years since publication of The Wealth of Nations. ‘Modern Enquiries into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations’ 5-6 March 2026 Keynes Hall, King’s College, Cambridge: Thursday, 9.15am – 5pm, and Friday, 9.00 – 12.45. Free, registration required. Arthur Goodhart Lecture Theatre (LG19), Law Faculty, Sidgwick Site: concluding public forum, Friday, 2-4 pm. No booking required, arrive early to secure a seat. All free and open to the public, students especially welcome.
Hampton Gaddy@hggaddy.bsky.social · 10mo ago

🚨 The Economist has been telling you for years that polygamy causes civil war by locking men out of marriage. A new article with @rebeccasear.bsky.social and @anthrolog.bsky.social explains that the demography of marriage markets doesn't actually work that way. 🧵 www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

High rates of polygyny do not lock large proportions of men out of the marriage market | PNAS

There is a widespread belief, in both the scholarly literature and the popular press, that polygyny prevents large numbers of men from marrying by ...

pnas.org

Nick Fitzhenry@nickfitzhenry.bsky.social · 10mo ago

I'm submitting my PhD dissertation today, with the defence scheduled in early December. Long years of work, but proud of the outcome and excited to develop it further. Thought I'd share the first few pages of the front matter:

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Zohran Kwame Mamdani@zohrankmamdani.bsky.social · 10mo ago

UNTIL IT'S DONE, Ep. 2 When the Brownsville Clinic opened in 1916, it was the first birth control center in America. Its very existence felt impossible. For young women, it was a lifeline. 109 years later, the Clinic is long closed—but Brownsville mothers are still struggling.

Nick Fitzhenry@nickfitzhenry.bsky.social · 12mo ago

Under-5 diarrhoeal disease death rates in South Africa during the 70s and 80s for coloured (mixed-race), indian and white race groups (apartheid state did not collect complete data for the black majority). The seasonality and heightened rates for the coloured population are quite shocking.

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Nick Fitzhenry@nickfitzhenry.bsky.social · last yr.

A striking visualisation of vaccine impact: Cape Town whooping cough deaths plummeted after DP (diphtheria and pertussis [whooping cough]) vaccine introduction (1950). Also reveals stark racial health disparities in South Africa, particularly in the first half of the 20th century.

The graph shows high mortality rates among 'non-white' populations (solid line) with significant peaks in the 1930s-1940s, followed by a sharp decline after the introduction of the DP vaccine in 1950. The dotted line represents White populations, which had much lower mortality rates throughout
Orkney Library & Archive@orkneylibrary.bsky.social · last yr.

The shipwreck uncovered in Sanday, #Orkney last year has been identified as HMS Hind, later the Earl of Chatham which was wrecked in the Bay of Lopness in 1788. More than 230 years buried in the seabed, before being released by a storm in 2024. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Archaeologists identify 250-year-old Shipwreck in Orkney

Scientific analysis and community-led research led to the identification of the Earl of Chatham, which was found last year.

bbc.co.uk