We are delighted to announce that the 2018 Postgraduate Poster Prize has been won by Mads Linnet Perner for the poster ‘Segregated behind the walls: Residential patterns in pre-industrial Copenhagen, 1700-1850’. The prize was supported by Bloomsbury Publishing.

Mads is a final year undergraduate at the University of Copenhagen and completed the research for this project at Lancaster University. The prize was decided by an open ballot conducted during our recent conference at the University of Keele.

The poster concerns the social geography of Copenhagen from c.1700 to 1850. It is a fascinating case study. Copenhagen’s population more than doubled during this period, but the city was prevented from expanding outwards by strict military regulations.

Historians have long-held that the walled city was ‘vertically’ segregated, with wealthier inhabitants living on upper floors and poorer residents on lower floors or in attics.

Mads’ project challenges that assumption. It maps geocoded data to show the living patterns of different social groups. The maps demonstrates that there was an increased tendency towards ‘horizontal’ segregation during the period, as poorer inhabitants were pushed away from central areas.

This was Mads’ first contribution to a history conference. He has told us that:

It’s overwhelming to win the poster prize. As a last-year undergraduate hoping to do more research in the future, I’ll carry this experience with me when I begin my masters studies at the University of Copenhagen in the Fall.

You can view a pdf version of the poster here.