Espen Storli

Espen Storli is Professor of History at the Department of Modern Social History, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). Educated at universities in Stavanger, Bergen, York, Valladolid and Trondheim, he obtained his doctorate from NTNU in 2010 and was subsequently a Harvard-Newcomen Fellow in business history at Harvard Business School (2011-2012).

Research interests:

• International economic and business history, especially 20th-century global commodity trading and strategic raw materials
• History of cartels, monopolies and market regulation
• Norwegian industrial and resource policy, notably aluminium, tin, bauxite and petroleum sectors
• Commodity-trading firms, price-setting mechanisms and the political economy of natural resources

Storli leads the Research-Council-funded project The Hidden Companies of the Global Economy: The Development of International Commodity Traders, 1945-2015 and co-directs the interdisciplinary History and Strategic Raw Materials Initiative with colleagues at NTNU and Coventry University. His recent publications analyse the evolution of global capitalism through the lens of commodity traders, the role of business services in European trading companies, and Scandinavian regulation of powerful international cartels.

Teaching:

• HIST3500 – Environmental and sustainability history
• HIST1500 – Modern History after c. 1750
• HIST2007 – Nationalism, Imperialism and Democratization after 1750
• KRIG3050/3051 – War, the environment and sustainability
• HIST2012 – Politics, society and culture in Europe after 1945
• HIST3400 – The global political economy of natural resources, 1870-2000
• HIST2008 – Economic History
• Master-thesis supervision in history

He has co-edited major volumes such as Tin and Global Capitalism, 1850-2000 (Routledge 2014) and Creating Global Capitalism: Commodity Traders and the First Global Economy (Routledge 2024), and serves as referee for Business History Review, Business History, Economic History Review and Journal of International Business Studies.