The conference deals with international collaboration of scientists and experts across the 'socialist world' and asks for its scientific, political, economic and social relevance for states, institutions and individuals in the context of the late Cold War.
Spaces of Opportunities: Expert Networks, Research Collaboration and Science Diplomacy in the Socialist World
In recent decades, scholars have explored the manifold entanglements between science, applied research and development, expertise and international politics in the context of the Cold War from various perspectives. The emergence of (economic) development policies and practices, the relevance of international organizations as actors, instruments and arenas for (science) diplomacy, or the shaping of international research policies in Western Europe are just few examples of such scholarship. Since a decade or so, the considerable influence technical experts from the socialist countries exerted in the decolonizing Global South has also become a major topic in the specialized literature.
What by now has hardly come into the focus of academics, though, are ‘East-East’-connections and entanglements. Only in recent years, historiographic interest in such entanglements in science, applied research and technological development has emerged. However, we still know relatively little about transnational expert networks within the socialist world, about the forms of competition and cooperation they enabled, as well as about their scientific, political, economic and social relevance for states, institutions and individuals in the context of the Cold War. This conference, generously funded by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, wants to change this.
Programme
8 Oct 2025
18.00 – 20.00
Public Keynote Lecture
Angela Romano (Bologna)
Cooperation Across, Within and Beyond Cold War Blocs: Structures, Dynamics and Agents
9 Oct 2025
9.00-9.30
Bogdan C. Iacob & Martin Bemmann
Welcome and Introduction
Motives
9.30-11.30
Doubravka Olšáková (Prague)
Global Ambitions, Local Tensions: Expert Networks and Science Diplomacy in the Cold War
Felix Herrmann (Bremen)
Divergent Goals in Building the Socialist Cross-Border Computer Industry
11.30-12.00
Coffee Break
12.00-13.00
Marius Tarita (Freiburg)
Poland’s Institute for Environmental Management and the CMEA during the 1970s and 1980s
13.00-14.00
Lunch Break
Emergence of Spaces of ‘Successful’ Cooperation
14.00-16.00
Jan Zofka (Leipzig)
Cotton in the CMEA: State Socialist Cooperation and Competition during the Early Cold War
Martin Bemmann (Freiburg)
Phosphor Dynamics and Fertilizer Tests: Successful Research Collaboration within the CMEA (1970s and 1980s)?
16.00-16.30
Coffee Break
16.30-17.30
Elena Kochetkova (Bergen)
Food as a Cold War Matter: Industrial Food Manufacturing and European Cooperation in the CMEA
10 Oct 2025
National Interests, Individual Benefits
9.00-11.00
Austin Jersild (Norfolk, VA)
Balancing the Books in the Socialist World: Czechoslovak, Bulgarian and East German Trade Dilemmas in Guinea-Conakry, 1958-1973
Darina Volf (Munich)
“The Enthusiasm is There, the Equipment Not Yet”: Czechoslovak and East German
11.00-11.30
Coffee Break
11.30-13.30
Alexa Geisthövel (Berlin)
“Budapest, We Have a Kidney”: Inter-Socialist Cooperation in Organ Transplantation, 1970-1990
Matthias Kaltenbrunner (Munich)
“Small CMEA”: The Central European Trade Agreement and its Counterhegemonic Legacies
13.30-14.30
Lunch Break
Beyond the Socialist World
14.30-16.30
Dora Vargha (Berlin)
There and Back Again: The World Health Organization and Socialist International Health
Anna Calori (Glasgow)
When Business Met Science: Agroindustry and Genetics between Yugoslavia and Its Non-Aligned Partners
16.30-17.00
Coffee Break
17.00-19.00
Bogdan C. Iacob (Bucharest/Vienna)
Romania, Medicinal Plants and Counter-hegemonic Cooperation in Global Health during the late 1970s and the 1980s
Ylber Marku (Munich)
Knowledge for the Revolution: The Pursuit of Expertise and Its Limits in Communist Albania
19.00-19.30
Concluding Remarks and Discussion