With the aim of integrating approaches to the history of science with those of global history, the project, which will involve historians from the fields of science, technology and economics, will investigate the material and immaterial flows and circulation of knowledge during the Cold War, both between Eastern and Western Europe and within each of the two blocs.

 

It will pay particular attention to the role played by transnational organisations, associations of scientists, political parties and private companies. It will also focus on certain key figures of scientists and policy makers, and their role as transnational actors in international organisations.

 

Based on the observation that during the Cold War any cultural, political and economic activity in the Western bloc was somehow conditioned by the Eastern bloc, and vice versa, this project will analyse the circulation of knowledge within the two blocks, which was always produced taking into account what the other was doing or thought to be doing.

 

In this line, one of the hypotheses that the project will want to demonstrate is that the creation of the European Economic Community (EEC) and of intra-European scientific organisations in Western Europe was a key factor in promoting the circulation of knowledge within Eastern Europe.

 

It will also emphasise the importance of the difference between international cooperation and integration (two concepts which are often confused in the rhetoric of international diplomacy and even in historiography), as well as the difference in how these two processes were perceived in Eastern and Western Europe.