I am pleased to announce that, despite repeated assurances …

I am pleased to announce that, despite repeated assurances that I already possess more degrees than common sense, I have been accepted for yet another PhD.
This year I will begin doctoral research at Birkbeck, University of London, focusing on the history of money, institutions, accounting systems, and administrative record-keeping.
Some people collect sports cars.
Others collect watches.
I appear to collect dissertations.
What particularly interests me is the evolution of the mechanisms by which societies learned to record obligations, identity, ownership, exchange, and accountability across time. This includes the study of livery records, financial administration, institutional bookkeeping, and the often-overlooked documentary infrastructure that made complex economic systems possible.
Much of modern debate about money begins in the wrong century. People argue endlessly about currencies, banking, and finance while paying remarkably little attention to the ledgers, registries, audits, censuses, rolls, and records that allowed large-scale institutions to function in the first place.
The history of money is, in many respects, the history of information.
Before one can tax, one must count.
Before one can borrow, one must account.
Before one can govern, one must record.
The romantic imagines history is shaped by kings, revolutions, and battles.
The accountant knows it is shaped by whoever kept the books.
So naturally, I have decided to spend the next several years buried in centuries-old records proving that the people with ink, ledgers, and filing systems were often more important than the people with crowns.