We would like to invite you to the international conference
Scientists and “Third World Countries” in the 1960s to 1980s,
held in Vila Lanna (V Sadech 1, Prague 6) between 23 – 24 November 2017.
The conference is organized by Masaryk Institute and Archives of the Czech Academy of Sciences, with support from the Strategy AV21 Programme – Forms and Functions of Communication.
The conference focuses on the period starting in the 1960s, which saw great political and economic changes in the so-called “Third World Countries”. The process of decolonization, the emergence of independent countries created from former colonies and UN mandates and the efforts of other countries to break away from their dependence on Western powers, the nationalization of industry, whether oil fields in the Middle East or the Suez Canal in Egypt, brought a change in the political orientation of large areas of Asia and Africa. The situation in Cuba had a very specific development. The newly formed independent countries found themselves in the grip of the fight between Soviet and American influence.
Programme
THURSDAY, 23rd NOVEMBER
9:00 – 9:30 Registration
9:30 – 10:00 Welcome speeches
10:00 – 11:00 Session I
- TAO CHEN (Institute for German Studies, Tongji University, Shanghai, China), In the shadow of a Sino-Soviet split: East German engineers in Zhengzhou (1960–1964)
- KAMILA MÁDROVÁ (Archive of the CTU, Prague, Czech Republic), The development and strategy of the contacts of the Czech Technical University with Third World Countries in the 1960s to 1980s
Panel discussions
11:00 – 11:30 Coffee break
11:30 – 13:00 Session II
- KARL HALL (Department of History, Central European University, Budapest, Hungary), “On the model of Soviet science”: Chinese physicists in the early years of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research
- MARTIN FRANC (Masaryk Institute and Archive of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague, Czech Republic), Ivan Málek and his participation in politics of international scientifi c support for the „Third World Countries“ in the 1960s
- ADÉLA JŮNOVÁ MACKOVÁ (Masaryk Institute and Archive of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague, Czech Republic), Czechoslovak scientists in Iraq in the 1960s
Panel discussions
13:00 – 14:30 Lunch
14:30 – 16:00 Session III
- ANNA ABELMANN BROCKMANN (North American History, Ruhr University of Bochum, Germany), „[T]he most welcome stranger in Africa“ Israeli scientists in Africa in the 1960s and their search for new allies
- JUSTYNA ANICETA TURKOWSKA (Department of Eastern European History, Faculty of History, Justus-Liebig-University of Giessen, Giessen, Germany), Polish geologists as agents of technical cooperation
- CLÁUDIA CASTELO (Centre for History of Science and Technology, University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal), Putting forward alternative approaches to development in the era of decolonization: the case of the Mission for Angola Agricultural Surveys
Panel discussions
16:00 – 16:30 Coffee break
16:30 – 17:30 Session IV
- Memories
18:00 Social event
FRIDAY, 24th NOVEMBER
10:00 – 11:00 Session V
- ERIC BURTON (Department of Economic and Social History, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria), Marxists-Leninists in African socialism. East German scholars at the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
- IAN NICOLAS INNERHOFER (Institute of German Studies, Constantine the Philosopher University, Nitra, Slovakia), The ‘overpopulation’ of the “Third World” from the perspective of the “Second World” in the 1960s and 70s
Panel discussions
11:00 – 11:30 Coffee break
11:30 – 13:00 Session VI
- HANA NAVRÁTILOVÁ (University of Reading, Reading, Great Britain), An Egyptologist between decolonization and the Cold War – Jaroslav Černý, employee of the UNESCO in Egypt in the 1960s
- DANIELA HANNOVÁ (Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic), Arab students inside the Soviet bloc. A case study of Czechoslovakia during the 1950s and 1960s
- BARBORA BUZÁSSYOVÁ (Institute of History, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Bratislava, Slovakia), Back to Africa speaking Slovak? “Third world” students in preparatory language centre in Senec during the 1960s
Panel discussions
13:00 – 14:30 Lunch
14:30 – 15:30 Session VII
- STEFFI MARUNG (Centre for Area Studies, Leipzig University, Leipzig, Germany), Academic battlefi elds: Soviet Africanists and the international Africanist Congresses in 1962–1973
- FRANTIŠEK BAHENSKÝ (Institute of Ethnology, Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague, Czech Republic), In the shadow of the hammer and the sickle – Czechoslovak ethnography in the 1950s and overseas research
- BLAŽ VERBIČ (Velenje Museum, Velenje, Slovenia), František Foit – Czech artist and scholar in Africa 1940s – 1960s
15:30 – 16:00 Panel discussions and closing remarks
