CALL FOR PAPERS
Science, Dissent, and Activism:
How Non-State Actors Challenged the Cold War Order
Dates: Monday, September 7 – Tuesday, September 8, 2026
Place: Prague, Czech Republic
Deadline for abstracts: April 19, 2026
Scientific Committee: Carola Sachse (professor emerita, University of Vienna, AT), Katja Castryck Naumann (GWZO Leipzig, DE), Kenji Ito (University of Tokyo, JAP), Doubravka Olšáková (Charles University in Prague, CZ, organizer), Michel Perottino (Charles University in Prague, CZ)
Rationale:
In recent years, science activism has gained renewed visibility, as scientists increasingly engage in public debates on climate change, global security, and democratic governance. These developments invite us to reconsider the historical roots of scientific activism and the longer trajectories through which non-state actors have mobilized knowledge and authority in times of geopolitical tension.
From this perspective, the Cold War emerges as a key historical laboratory for examining these dynamics. Cold War historiography has long been dominated by state-centric perspectives that privilege diplomatic elites, military institutions, and formal international organizations. In recent years, however, growing attention has been paid to non-state actors who operated across, alongside, or in tension with Cold War power structures. Scientists, intellectuals, dissidents, activists, and expert communities played a crucial role in articulating alternative forms of authority, mobilizing knowledge for political ends, and creating transnational spaces of interaction that both reflected and contested the bipolar order.
This conference seeks to advance an analytically grounded discussion of how non-state actors used science, expertise, and moral authority to challenge Cold War logics of sovereignty, security, and ideological loyalty. Particular emphasis will be placed on the interplay between knowledge production and political agency across different institutional settings, including conferences, committees, universities and research institutes, expert networks, and non-governmental organizations. A central point of reference is the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs and related initiatives, understood not only as a peace movement but as laboratories of non-state diplomacy, epistemic authority, and Cold War governance.
In addition, we are interested in contributions that examine hybrid actors occupying the space between state and non-state authority, including intergovernmental frameworks that operated as platforms of expert governance, norm production, and monitoring rather than as traditional diplomatic actors. Institutions such as the OSCE, particularly in its late Cold War and post-Cold War configurations, invite analysis as sites where non-state practices, expertise, and moral authority were institutionalized within formally intergovernmental settings. The conference aims to situate such forums within broader histories of expertise, dissent, and activism across different political systems and world regions.
We welcome empirically rich case studies as well as theoretically informed contributions from the history of science and technology, Cold War history, new diplomatic history, political sciences, international relations, political sociology, area studies, and peace studies. Comparative, transnational, and entangled perspectives are particularly encouraged.
Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
• Non-state actors and the reconfiguration of political authority during the Cold War;
• Science as a resource for dissent, mediation, and legitimacy;
• Institutional contexts of non-state action: conferences, committees, universities, research institutes, and NGOs;
• Tensions between loyalty, autonomy, and internationalism in scientific and expert communities;
• Informal diplomacy, expert forums, and the politics of “neutral” knowledge;
• Dissenting expertise within socialist, authoritarian, and post-colonial contexts;
• Activism, morality, and responsibility in nuclear, environmental, and peace-related debates;
• Knowledge circulation, surveillance, and control across ideological borders;
• Methodological challenges in studying non-state actors, expertise, and informal power.
Financial support for participants: Thanks to dedicated funding, we will be able to cover accommodation costs in Prague for a limited number of early career researchers and researchers in need. Applicants who wish to be considered for this support are encouraged to indicate this when submitting their proposal.
Submission Guidelines: Prospective participants are invited to submit a short abstract (max. 240 words) and a brief biographical note by 19 April 2026 to doubravka.olsakova@fsv.cuni.cz
*Acknowledgement: The conference is organized within the framework of the research grant Forging Peace in the Shadow: Czechoslovak Pugwash and Pugwash in Czechoslovakia (GA25-16159S), in collaboration with the IUHST/DHST Commission on Science, Technology and Diplomacy and in collaboration with the Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe in Leipzig.
