FIU Professor Mira Wilkins recognized for groundbreaking scholarship in business history

Mira Wilkins, a professor in FIU’s Department of Economics and a renowned economic and business historian, was recognized for her groundbreaking scholarship by the Business History Conference on June 13 in Milan, Italy. The conference – an international organization devoted to encouraging all aspects of research, writing and teaching of business history – established a prize in Wilkins honor.

“The Mira Wilkins Prize for the Best Article on International Business History” is awarded to the author of the best international and comparative business history article published in “Enterprise & Society.” Awardees receive $250 and a memento presented at the Conference’s annual meeting.

“I am thrilled and honored that the Business History Conference has established a prize in my name,” she said. “I hope that it stimulates many important studies of the history of international business.”

Wilkins was honored for her work on the history of foreign investment and multinational enterprise. She is the author of a number of critically-acclaimed books, including “The Emergence of Multinational Enterprise: American Business Abroad from the Colonial Era to 1914” and “The History of Foreign Investment in the United States, 1914 – 1945.” She also has published many scholarly articles in leading journals. Currently, Wilkins is writing a book on the history of foreign investment in the United States, since 1945.

A past president of the Business History Conference and a fellow of the Academy of International Business, Wilkins has received many honors including a Guggenheim Fellowship, FIU’s Outstanding University Professor Award and the Business History Conference’s Lifetime Achievement Award.

She began her career working with Pulitzer-prize winning historian Allan Nevins, and in 1964 wrote “American Business Abroad: Ford on Six Continents“ with Nevins’ co-author, Frank Ernest Hill. Their monograph was the first to focus exclusively on the history of the international business activities of a major American corporation.

“I traveled all over the world to conduct research for the book on Ford’s operations,” Wilkins said. “I even went up the Amazon River to visit a rubber plantation formerly owned by Ford.”