Sebastian Keibek

PhD student, History

Current research focus: the male occupational structure of England and Wales, 1650-1850

Biography

Career

1995-2008: Consultant and, from 2002, partner at OC&C Strategy Consultants, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
1993-1995: Petroleum engineer for Royal Dutch Shell in Aberdeen, Scotland
1991-1993: Researcher for the Dutch Institute of Applied Physics, Delft, The Netherlands (as 'alternative military service')

Qualifications

2011-2012: MPhil (History), University of Cambridge
2008-2011: BA (History), University of Cambridge
1985-1991: MSc (Physics), University of Utrecht

Research

The Occupational Structure of Britain project is shedding new light on the Industrial Revolution and on the economic developments in early modern Britain that preceded it. Before 1850, its results are mainly based on parish records. However, before the Rose Act of 1812, only a (small) minority of parishes actually recorded occupations. The composition of this 'parish sample' furthermore changed over time. And, virtually no parishes recorded occupations before 1700. My research is therefore aimed at complementing the occupational information from parish records with that from a source that recorded occupations much more widely and continuously: probate documents (wills, inventories, etcetera). This source is itself problematic as it is strongly socially biased. For obvious reasons, the poor were much less likely to be probated than the (relatively) wealthy and the probate record on its own therefore does not provide a fair picture of contemporary occupational structure. However, this bias can be removed by combining the probate data with the parish record data. The weaknesses in these two sources can then be overcome using their respective strenghts, that is, the lack of bias in the parish record and the temporally continuous and geographically complete coverage of the probate record. Furthermore, since probate records provide information before 1700, they allow us to push our understanding of the development of the (male) occupational structure further back in time, to 1650 and potentially even further.