Ziming Zhu  朱梓铭

I am a PhD student studying Economic History at the London School of Economics. My research focuses on occupational mobility in Victorian and Edwardian England. Specifically, I estimate intragenerational and intergenerational mobility in England between 1851 and 1911 using linked census data. My supervisors are Prof. Neil Cummins and Prof. Chris Minns. The intended date of completion for my PhD is September 2024.

My preoccupation with historical social mobility began while I was working as a research assistant for the Families of England project. This piqued my interests in both the the possibilities and the processes of climbing up (as well as falling down) the ladder for people in the past, and how these compared to societies of the modern day. The digitisation of the England and Wales censuses of 1851-1911 opens up a myriad of opportunities for new and exciting research that would not have been possible without the advent of big data. Thus, my project mainly draws from the Integrated Census Microdata (I-CeM) to verify if what we thought about social mobility in the past was true and to seek answers to questions that remained unresolved.

I was born in Guilin, a small but stunningly beautiful city in Guangxi, China. In 2009, I moved to London with my parents and have lived there ever since. Between 2016-2019, I studied for three years at LSE pursuing a BSc in Economic History. Thereafter, I spent a year at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, where I obtained my MPhil in Economic and Social History.

I was captivated by the Beautiful Game soon after arriving in the U.K. and became an avid football (it's not soccer!) fan. My other hobbies include eating ice cream (please send recommendations), hiking on England's pleasant pastures, and watching various other sporting events.