Educational Internationalism in the Cold War

This edited volume delves into the intricate landscape of educational internationalism during the Cold War, providing an in-depth examination of its diverse forms, impulses, and global impacts.

Through multilingual archival research, the chapters uncover a variety of experiences that have fostered cross-border exchanges and cooperation within, between, and beyond the Western and Eastern blocs. Promoted by a wide range of individual and collective actors, internationalism in education has extended across a broad spectrum of fields, including academic mobility schemes, cultural interchanges, youth science competitions, development programs, and training courses. This collection offers, for the first time, a comprehensive analysis of these initiatives, revealing their intersections with national educational policies and processes of decolonization, development, and Europeanization. It also challenges conventional historical narratives by both uncovering forms of collaboration and solidarity that transcended the Iron Curtain and emphasizing the pivotal role of the Global South as a central arena of encounters.

Educational Internationalism in the Cold War presents a rich understanding of the Cold War as a laboratory of contemporary globalization and is a valuable addition to the scholarship on one of the most critical moments of the twentieth century.

Damiano Matasci is a senior research associate at the University of Geneva. His research explores the history of Europe and colonial Africa in a transnational and transimperial perspective, with a focus on education, childhood, and science. He is the author of Internationaliser l’éducation. La France, l’UNESCO et la fin des empires coloniaux en Afrique, 1945–1961 (2023) and L’école républicaine et l’étranger. Une histoire internationale des réformes scolaires en France, 1870–1914 (2015).

Raphaëlle Ruppen Coutaz is a senior lecturer at the History Department of the University of Lausanne. Her research focuses on the history of international cultural relations and draws on a variety of fields and approaches: history of the media, history of European integration, and digital history. She is the author of La voix de la Suisse à l’étranger. Radio et relations culturelles internationales (1932–1949). She is currently conducting research on the pro-European educational networks during the Cold War. She was a visiting fellow at the Department of History and Civilization of the European University Institute in Florence and a visiting professor at the Research Center of Excellence “Écrire une histoire nouvelle de l’Europe” (LabEx EHNE) in Paris.