This is the second conference in a new series launched by the Institute of Economic History at Humboldt University on quantitative economic and social history. This workshop, to take place annually, continues and revives forty years of tradition of Wolfram Fischer’s seminar series at the Free University of Berlin. In its new shape, the Berlin Colloquium is a marketplace for the exchange of new ideas, a debut stage for new researchers, and a summer workshop for advanced students in search of their own research agenda.