The Cold War Studies Centre is now the LSE IDEAS Cold War Studies Programme (CWSP), part of LSE IDEAS, a centre for the study of international affairs, diplomacy and grand strategy. CWSP is a programme for advanced study and research into the key political, social, intellectual, economic and military aspects of the Cold War, their historical origins, and their contemporary repercussions. The Centre is home to a very active group of LSE teaching staff and graduate students, as well as to visiting scholars and research and post-doctoral fellows.

Announcements

Call For Papers

2010 European Summer School on Cold War History|

September 1-4, 2010

After a successful experience in 2009, the Istituto Italiano di Scienze Umane SUM and the London School of Economics IDEAS, in collaboration with the Università di Bologna, are convening the 2010 European Summer School on Cold War History at the conference center of Bertinoro (Forlì) on September 1-4, 2010.

LSE IDEAS Pinto PhD studentships

For 2010 entry, LSE IDEAS is offering two full scholarships for new PhD students in the field of Cold War history. The scholarships cover fees and contribution towards living expenses for three years. They are open to all students undertaking research in any field of Cold War history, with annual renewal subject to satisfactory academic performance at the School. Scholarships will be awarded on academic merit and research potential.

Application process

There is no separate application form for these awards. However, if you wish to be considered for an award, you must hold an offer for a place in the International History department by 12 June 2010. As we only receive fully completed applications into the department, you should be thinking of applying in good time for this (to allow for collation of references and so on which cause delay). Therefore the deadline for these applications is 1 May, 2010

The award will be made solely on outstanding academic merit and research potential. This relates not only to your past academic record, but also to an assessment of your chosen topic and to your likely aptitude to complete a PhD in the time allocated. The recipient will be expected to teach for free one year out of three at the International History department and carry out a small amount of administrative assistance at IDEAS as part of the tenure of the scholarship.

We aim to notify the successful applicant by 30 June 2010.

Enquiries about these awards should be directed to Dr Svetozar Rajak in LSE IDEAS, s.rajak@lse.ac.uk|.

Latest News

The Cold War International History Project (CWIHP) has published working paper #60: The Blind Leading the Blind: Soviet Advisors, Counter-Insurgency and Nation-Building in Afghanistan, by Dr Artemy Kalinovsky.
Why should social scientists be interested in the Cold War?
LSE IDEAS co-director Professor Michael Cox delivered lecture on this topic as part of the LSE Thinking Like a Scientist lunchtime lecture series.
Between 1989 and 1991 the international system was turned upside down by a series of major changes that now go under the generic heading "end of the Cold War". Professor Cox argued that what happened in that short three year time span raises profound questions for the social sciences - most obviously about the causes of things, why we find prediction so difficult, as well as the central role of the individual in shaping events that cause fundamental structural change at the global level. You can listen to the podcast here.
Dr Artemy Kalinovsky analyzes the Obama Administration's policy towards Russia in "Simply Press the Button? The Reality of Resetting with Russia."
Professor Arne Westad interview: "Living in the Second Nuclear Age".
CALL FOR PAPERS: 2010 LSE-GWU-UCSB International Graduate Student Conference on the Cold War
Professor Saki Dockrill: in memoriam
Pinto Fellow Artemy Kalinovsky wrote Afghanistan Is the New Afghanistan for Foreign Policy
IDEAS-CWSP co-convened the Cold War Studies Summer School in Florence, 3-5 September 2009
LSE IDEAS hosted the annual LSE-GWU-UCSB Graduate Cold War Conference. Details.

Upcoming Events

LSE IDEAS Cold War Studies Programme Seminar

Peace and the Human Person:
The “Foreign Policy” of the Polish Catholic Intelligentsia Clubs with France, Belgium, and West Germany, 1956-1978
9 March 2010, 6.30pm, B212 LSE IDEAS Conference Room|
Speaker: Piotr H. Kosicki
Chair: Professor Arne Westad

In December 1967, Poland’s Ministry of Confessional Affairs circulated to the leadership of the Polish United Workers’ Party a memorandum in which it argued that the network of liberal Catholic journals and discussion groups had achieved such international prominence that the Catholic intellectuals were in fact conducting a “separate foreign policy” that “functioned in distinct contradiction with the warranted requirements of policies in this sphere mandated by the State.” The goal of this lecture is to define this “foreign policy” and to explain its intellectual, political, and social origins and consequences. Beginning in 1956, this movement – whose total membership never exceeded 500 – was able to send representatives abroad regularly. What began as an exchange of ideas with Western European counterparts turned into a transnational project to find the key to harmonizing Catholicism and socialism: through progressively more frequent, more numerous, and deeper contacts with French personalist circles, Belgian journals and trade unions, and West German peace activists . Within the world of Catholic intellectuals – this movement contributed to the intellectual and political foundations of both Karol Wojtyła (John Paul II), and the Solidarity movement, and they led efforts towards Polish-German reconciliation. In their quest to be both good Catholics and good socialists, they regularly parted the Iron Curtain and problematized Cold War bipolarity, laying the groundwork for Poland’s “return to Europe” in 1989.

Piotr H. Kosicki is a Centennial Fellow and ABD in the Department of History at Princeton University. For the 2009-10 academic year, he is also Chateaubriand Fellow and Adjunct Professor at the Institut d’Études politiques de Paris. In the past, he has taught at the Cooper Union and at Warsaw University (the latter while on a Fulbright Fellowship). He has three principal research and teaching interests: the interaction between Catholicism and socialism, the events of 1989, and memory of mass violence in Poland. He is currently completing a Ph.D. dissertation on the ZNAK movement and its Western European contacts, and he is co-editing a volume on the global events of 1989.

Recent Events

Cold War Studies Seminar

Neutrality in the Early Cold War: Arms Import and Neutrality|
26 January 2010, 6.00pm, B212 |
Speaker: Marco Wyss
Chair: Professor Nigel Ashton

The onset of the Cold War called into question whether neutrality was viable in an international system dominated by the East-West conflict. In addition, the mounting technological sophistication required to conduct modern warfare significantly contributed to the difficulty of a practicable permanent neutral policy in the early Cold War. This seminar will address these issues through the study of Switzerland’s armament policy. It will examine how Switzerland’s self-imposed policy of armed neutrality increased Swiss dependence on Western armaments and thereby endangered its claims to political neutrality. The Swiss were able to maintain their status of a permanent neutral after the Second World War and thus succeeded in upholding a centuries long policy. Their armed neutrality, however, required modern weaponry, and it was in search of this material that Switzerland turned to the West – mainly to the United Kingdom – in the early years of the Cold War.

Currently a Visiting Fellow at IDEAS, Marco Wyss is a PhD candidate at the University of Nottingham (Politics and International Relations) and at the University of Neuchâtel (History) where he is an Assistant in Contemporary History. Marco holds a fellowship for prospective researchers from the Swiss National Science Foundation.