Subscribe to our "Population in Perspective" Substack Here!
Join us for the upcoming seminar on Occupational Structure in the Congress Kingdom of Poland in the 19th Century with Marcin Kamecki, PhD candidate in Economics and Finance, University of Warsaw. On Monday 2 November 2026 at 2-3.30 PM in Butler Room, Nuffield College.
The research addresses a gap in the study of industrialization within the Russian Empire by examining changes in the occupational structure of the semi-autonomous Congress Kingdom of Poland during the 19th century. The methodology relies on data extracted from birth records, using Handwritten Text Recognition and Large Language Model tools to efficiently process the source material. The occupational structure model, consistent with the PSTI classification system, is based on stratified random sampling, allowing for transparent and reliable statistical estimations. The resulting data enable verification of several research hypotheses, including differences in occupational structure across districts and among representatives of different religious groups, the impact of proximity to the railway network on industrialization, the role of various types of localities in economic change, and a comparison of the observed economic and social transformations with those occurring in other countries.
Marcin Kamecki is a PhD candidate in Economics and Finance at the University of Warsaw. He holds a master’s degree in Computer Science and Econometrics from the University of Warsaw. His research focuses on the economic and social history of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Central and Eastern Europe, with particular emphasis on occupational structure, industrialisation, and regional economic development.