Archival Data and Economic Pedagogy: Building Skills and Engagement in Undergraduate Classrooms

This paper presents a teaching approach that integrates archival data into undergraduate economics instruction to build data literacy and foster critical thinking.Developed through a research project on British Mandate Palestine, the approach engages students in cleaning, interpreting, and analyzing historical datasets.Especially effective in introductory courses, the assignments support inclusive, hands-on learning and connect core economic concepts to broader questions of inequality, policy, and development.By embedding student contributions in a larger research initiative, the approach promotes collaboration, early exposure to research practices, and a deeper understanding of economics as a historically grounded social science.