ABSTRACT
In the early 2000s I worked at the Iish as a phd student, writing a dissertation on early modern women’s work. I felt I was in the right place at this institute: the Research Department focused on family strategies and increasingly on global labour history. The academic atmosphere and debates were lively and colleagues were friendly. The best thing was that the Iish was not simply an institute of researchers. There were also many capable people working on the development and preservation of collections and developing a digital infrastructure. In the past I had worked closely with some of them on a few business history projects, but in a context of inventorying the available archival material of the firm in question, rather than as a frequent user of the core Iish archives. 1
