Léa Meyer is a Ph.D. candidate in Economic and Social History at the Paul Bairoch Institute of Economic History of the University of Geneva under the supervision of Prof. Mary O’Sullivan. She obtained a Bachelor in Economic History and Political Economy in 2021 and a Master in Political Economy of Capitalism in 2023 from the University of Geneva.

Her research focuses on the European wool industry from a global perspective between 1764 and 1850 – a defining moment in the globalization of this commodity. This period witnessed a rupture in Spain’s long-standing dominance as the primary supplier of fine merino wool on the international market and the emergence of new European and extra-European sources, culminating in Australia’s rise as the leading external supplier of raw wool to British manufacturers.

By moving between macro-level trade dynamics and micro-historical firm data, her work examines how merchant capital played a decisive role in integrating commodity chains through the sourcing, financing, and distribution of raw wool. More broadly, she is interested in the organization and dynamics of commodity chains and their relationship to the distribution of value within and across states. Methodologically, her project combines public sources, such as parliamentary records, with private archives, utilizing qualitative and quantitative analyses of merchant correspondence and accounting books to reconstruct profit and flows of capital.

She is also a research assistant for Prof. Simon Hug in the Department of Political Science and International Relations of the University of Geneva since January 2024. Interested in historical data visualization, she also holds a Certificate of Open Studies Diploma in Applied Data Science from the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL).

Research interests

• History of Capitalism & Merchant Capitalism
• Global Commodity Chains  
• Political Economy of Trade and Fiscal Policy
• Market Integration and Globalization (18th–19th centuries)
• Spanish and British Imperial Economic History

Publications

Meyer, Léa. "Power and Profit in the Spanish-French Wool Chain: The Distributional Effects of Fiscality (1764-1792)." Fabric of Profit Working Paper Series, no. 7 (March 2026). Archive ouverte UNIGE. https://archive-ouverte.unige.ch/unige:192135.