Scientists and their Knowledge Networks in the Cold War Era

Scientists and their Knowledge Networks in the Cold War Era

Prof. Dr. Marc Matten, Dr. Henrike Rudolph, Renée Krusche, Carolin Tzschentke, Shaoying Zhu

In the past decades, the history of science has experienced numerous turns due to new methodologies or the investigation of previously overlooked sources. This gave rise to new perspectives that have emphasized the contribution of non-European societies to both the emergence and formation of academic disciplines. While these findings have been analyzed in detail for late imperial and Republican China, the case for the People’s Republic of China during the Cold War era has remained a lacuna. This project understands knowledge production as a continuous transnational process in which the countries of China, Japan, USA, Western Europe and the Soviet Union were equally involved. Applying methods of digital humanities (DH) we measure and visualize transnational knowledge flows beyond the national scale by highlighting the movement of scientists, of their publications and of research topics across time and space.