PhD project
as part of the Leibniz-Collaborative Excellence project "Crafting Entanglements. Afro-Asian Pasts of the Global Cold War" (CRAFTE)

The aim of the project is to trace the lived realities of Afro-Asian students and trainees during the Cold War. Drawing on work on Afro-Asian students in the GDR and FRG, the project aims to show how these actors were integrated into networks and institutional and administrative frameworks, and what resources they used to influence these in return - not as passive recipients of global bloc politics, but as translocal actors who broke through the stereotypical binaries of East-West, North-South and centre-periphery. The focus here will be on the social, political and cultural curricula that accompanied these young people alongside their professional training, shaping their future lives.

With this project, I want to write a polycentric history of the Cold War which gives space to Afro-Asian actors and avoids equating their interests and desires with those of their country of origin. The aim is to create an everyday history of dealing with opportunities and demands as well as one's own and other people's identities, which takes into account translocality and the lives of the non-elite. South-South connections formed during shared times in Europe or even the upkeep of such friendships after returning to the country of origin must not be romanticized, but must be considered in their structural context.

In addition, as part of CRAFTE, I will be working on a database of thematically relevant grey literature and eyewitness accounts together with colleagues from Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO, Berlin), Leibniz Institute for Research on Society and Space (IRS, Erkner) and Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU, New Delhi).

Primary Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Frank Bösch
Secondary Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Isabella Löhr