Subject Area
Transnational Knowledge Transfer and Academic Cooperation
Those researching the history of knowledge and science are increasingly, and more intensively, working from a transnational perspective. This trend is in line with studies of such border-crossing relationships of transfer and exchange in the production and circulation of knowledge in Eastern Europe, which are shaped particularly strongly by global connections. The analyses of selected sub-fields of history, social and economic studies and the natural sciences connect approaches focusing on ideas, societal elements and institutions with questions from transnational and global history.
This centres around three dimensions: (1) the circulation and reception of knowledge from Eastern Europe; (2) knowledge about the region beyond its borders; as well as (3) transregional and international cooperations established or co-created by researchers from the region. Researchers aim at understanding Eastern Europe as an extremely interwoven and globally influential knowledge sphere, and at reflecting on how historical, social, regional and cultural studies continue to construct the region of Eastern Europe to this day.
Research Subjects
Epidemic in a war and post-war context: The »Spanish Flu«
This project takes a comparative look at the spread of Spanish flu in Belgium and Poland. On the one hand, the aim of this research is to understand how Spanish flu arrived and spread in the two territories under German rule, and to measure its course, extent, consequences; on the other, it studies how the epidemic was perceived, understood and fought.
Foreign Trade Theory and Politics in State Socialism
This section examines the connection between knowledge production and knowledge adaptation in the economic field in countries of the Eastern Bloc. It focuses on debates about foreign trade’s function in the development of a »socialist world system« and the concrete reform attempts they sparked in Eastern Europe.
Histories of Historiography
The history of historiographies in Eastern Europe is currently displaying a trend towards (re)nationalisation. In contrast, these researches aim to reconstruct border-crossing exchanges of historians from the region as well as underline their active engagement with world history.
Ice Age Research and Ornithology
With the objective to connect the history of the research on animate and inanimate nature in Eastern Europe with the region’s cultural history, this history of science-oriented research focuses particularly on transnational entanglements in glacial geology and ornithology,
Social Sciences and Socialism in the World
The studies under this thematic focus on how social sciencists in socialist countries of Eastern Europe during the period of the Cold War reacted to the changing North-South relations. They study how East European actors and institutions connected their concern with the development in their own societies to the development in African, Asian and Latin American contexts. We analyze the international circulation of Eastern European concepts and analyses, particularly through UNESCO’s scientific networks.
