Faculty of Science, Technology and Medicine
Faculty of Law, Economics and Finance
Faculty of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences
Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust
Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine
Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History
Luxembourg Centre for European Law
Luxembourg Centre for Socio-Environmental Systems
Hands on History talk with Sandrine Kott, Global Distinguished Professor New York University emerita professor of Modern History university of Geneva, visiting professor NYU
In this presentation, Sandrine Kott will discuss the main conclusion of her book, A World More Equal: An Internationalist History of the Cold War. The book explores the post–Second World War era and examines the Cold War paradigm that shaped it, from an international perspective centered on organizations and associations.
It argues that these international organizations served not only as arenas where the discourse of the Cold War was staged, but also—perhaps more importantly—as spaces for dialogue and collaboration among officials and experts from the three worlds of the Cold War.
The language and practices of these organizations reveal a world structured by logics that often diverged from the dominant Cold War narrative. By uncovering these alternative logics and the “underground” organization of global relations, the book invites us to view the Cold War from a different angle—one that brings the problem of global inequality to the forefront.
About the speaker
Sandrine Kott is Global Distinguished Professor at New York University and Professor Emerita of Modern European History at the University of Geneva. Her research focuses on the history of labor and social policies in both capitalist and socialist societies. She is currently studying international organizations as spaces for the circulation of knowledge and expertise in economic and social fields.
Among her last books: A World more Equal. An Internationalist Perspective on the Cold War, Columbia University press, 2004, revised translation of Organiser le monde. Une autre histoire de la guerre froide, Paris, Le Seuil, 2021; Day to Day Communisme, Michigan University press, 2014 ; Sozialstaat und Gesellschaft. Das deutsche Kaiserreich in Europa, Göttingen, Vandehoeck&Ruprecht, 2014, ed. with Kiran Klaus Patel, Nazism across Borders. The Social Policies of the Third Reich and their Global Appeal, Oxford University Press, 2018, (ed. with Michel Christian and Ondrej Matejka), Planning in Cold War Europe, competition, cooperation, circulations, Oldenburg, De Gruyter, 2018.