Henry Snow Keynote Speaker

Historian of economic thought, labour politics and the history of capitalism at the University of Connecticut
Author of Control Science: How Management Made the Modern World
Expert on work, management, economic ideas and the political forces shaping modern society

Henry Snow's Biography

Henry Snow is a historian of economic thought and labor politics from the 17th century to the present. They teach in the History department at the University of Connecticut.

Their research focuses on the role of work in global politics and economics. Their first book, Control Science: How Management Made the Modern World, explains how today’s economic common sense was made through the last four centuries of labor management. It explores management theory and workplace practice across a range of workplaces, from early British industrial factories to 20th-century Zambian copper mines to 21st-century Amazon warehouses. Control Science was selected by the Financial Times as one of their top summer 2026 books in Business and is currently being translated for publication in Korean, Chinese, and Russian.

As a public scholar, Henry translates abstract economic and political developments through the personal stories of thinkers who have made history, from well-known figures like John Locke and Friedrich Hayek to ordinary sailors and factory workers. They have also written for the Washington Post, Commonweal, and Jacobin, and publish a newsletter, Another Way. Their second book, Enemies of Order: Labor and Power at the Atlantic Dockside, is forthcoming with the University of Georgia Press. It explains how artisans, bureaucrats, and intellectuals clashing over port labor shaped the American Revolution, British abolition, and labor mechanization in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century Atlantic world. Their work has been supported by the McNeil Center for Early American Studies, the American Heritage Center, the Society for Nautical Research, and other institutions.

Artisanal Intelligence: Lessons for the AI Future from Automation’s Past

Two and a half centuries ago, specialist advances in textiles and pottery began to revolutionize labor. The results were not what anyone expected– and have important lessons for today’s AI revolution. This talk explores those lessons through select episodes in 18th-century British, 19th-century Japanese, and 20th-century American industrial development.

The Architecture of Capitalism

From Jeremy Bentham’s infamous Panopticon prison to today’s Amazon warehouses, the physical architecture of capitalism has co-developed with its intellectual and political architecture. This talk looks at the evolution of capitalism through its buildings and ideas, explaining how its global-scale principles appear in local facilities, and how those facilities shape capitalism’s operation, past and present.

What Can We Know? Economics and Epistemology

From before Adam Smith to after John Maynard Keynes, a central and dividing question in economic thought has been how much we can actually understand about the world. This talk takes audiences through four centuries of arguments about epistemology in economics, then applies them to present conditions and conundrums.

The Power of Slack: Recognizing Optimization’s Limits

Using real-world case studies past and present, this talk explores the limits of a narrow accounting approach to management. It explains how tight optimization can foreclose promising advances and explores what organizations and institutions might do instead to pursue efficiency without compromising adaptability.

They help audiences understand the historical forces that have shaped work, management and the global economy, revealing how ideas about labour and leadership continue to influence business today.
They translate complex economic history into engaging, accessible insights, equipping leaders to better understand the origins of modern management, workplace culture and organisational power.
They combine rigorous academic research with compelling storytelling, drawing on centuries of political, economic and labour history to challenge conventional thinking about work and productivity.
Their bestselling book Control Science explores how management practices evolved over four centuries, offering fresh perspectives on leadership, labour, technology and the future of work.
Their keynotes encourage organisations to rethink established assumptions, understand the historical roots of today’s workplace challenges and make more informed decisions about the future of work and management.