She taught part-time at a boarding school for around 10 years until in 1936 she received a
Leverhulme Scholarship so she could focus on research full-time. During
World War II, she worked as a civil servant in
Colwyn Bay, where she worked for the
Ministry of Food. In 1948, Carus-Wilson was made a
Reader and then went on to become a professor of
economic history. She taught at LSE from 1953 until she retired on 1965. She was a
Ford's lecturer at
Oxford between 1964 and 1965, where she taught English history. She also was given an honorary doctorate in 1968 from
Smith College.
Research Carus-Wilson focused on
medieval economic history. During the beginning of WWII, she started publishing her research on the cloth industry in England. Her paper,
An Industrial Revolution of the Thirteenth Centuryan Industrial Revolution of the Thirteenth Century, was "widely read," and discussed how medieval textile workers made significant contributions to the technology of textile work in England. Her work led to the "discovery of the importance of rural industry in late-medieval England," according to
The Economic History Review. Along with scholars,
Lewis Mumford and
Marc Bloch, Carus-Wilson "captured the imaginations of a younger generation of scholars in the emergent field of the history of technology with their new vision of medieval technological prowess." Carus-Wilson studied 13th century England's textile industry and described a "rapid adoption of waterpowered
fulling." Her article used research drawn from primary sources such as royal and
ecclesiastical records. Her research showed a type of revolution in technology that was similar to the
Industrial Revolution in the amount of change it caused in 13th century England and how quickly it was adopted. In the early 1960s, she contributed 2 chapters on the wool industry to the second volume of the
Cambridge Economic History of Europe (1963), which
The Economic History Review called "valuable."
Publications •
Medieval Merchant Venturers (London, 1954) - collected essays, 1929 to 1950. • ''England's Export Trade 1275–1547'', with Olive Coleman (Oxford, 1963). ==References==