Postgraduate & Early Career Activities

2025-26 Academic Year Activities

If you would like more details or information on how to attend please email STAND.ECR@gmail.com.

STAND Virtual Seminar Series

We organise a series of virtual seminars devoted to postgraduate and early career scholars. The goal of these sessions is to discuss works in progress or recently-published works from postgraduates and early career scholars in a constructive and friendly environment. We welcome the participation of ECS’ and established scholars from all over the world.

We are currently seeing participants for our ECS Seminar Series! Seminars last one hour and usually consist of a brief presentation followed by Q&A. Possible formats include:
– A pre-circulated work-in-progress paper (journal article draft, thesis chapter, book chapter etc) of 10-20 pages, using the seminar as an opportunity to gain feedback or suggestions for improvement.
– A 20-30 minute presentation on your current research, followed by Q&A, discussion and feedback.
– An ‘in conversation with’ session where you are paired with someone with similar research interests, to have a discussion on a particular topic. You can also use this time to raise questions to experts or individuals working on similar topics to you.

We welcome inquiries regarding alternative seminar formats, and encourage you to get in touch if you are interested! Please send any expressions of interest by 20 September to STAND.ECR@gmail.com, in an email which includes your name, short bio and a brief summary of your research as it pertains to the seminar.

*** STAND ECR 2025-2026 Schedule ***

6 November 2025, 3pm CET – Presenter: Hannah Haegeland (John Hopkins University), Paper: ‘Nuclear Bangladesh?: A South Asian History of global Science’.

4 December 2025, 3pm CET – Presenter: Anna Smelova (Georgetown University), Paper: ‘From Tsarist Exile to Soviet Science: Populist Revolutionaries, the Bolshevization of Ethnography, and the Management of Siberia’s Diversity, 1860s–1920s’.

5 February 2026, 3pm CET – Presenter: Sara Bassanelli (Politecnico di Torino), Paper: ‘Negotiating Standards in Physics: The Diplomatic Case of Electrical Units (1920s-1960s)‘.

Rest tbc

Past Sessions…

Academic Year 2024-2025

3 October 2024, 14:00 CET – Seminar discussion on: ‘The role and relevance of non-state actors in science diplomacy’. Introduction: Barbara Hof. Speakers: Péter Marton, Néstor Herran, Doubravka Olšáková, Matthew Adamson

7 November 2024, 14:00 CET – Virtual Seminar – Presenter: Tijana Rupcic (Central European University) Paper: ‘The Technomanagerial Paradigm in Yugoslavia: Examining the Interplay of Concept and Practice in Socialist Development’

5 December 2024, 14:00 CET – Virtual Seminar – Presenter: Giacomo Simoncelli (Sapienza University of Rome). Paper: Diplomacy of “the search for the ideal influenza vaccine” International relations around immunisation against the pandemic influenza threat.

6 Feb 2025, 14:00 CET – Virtual Seminar – Presenter: Isabella Bonaventura (Federal University of São Paulo). Paper: Latin American scientific networks in the first years of the SBPC (1948 – 1951)

6 March 2025, 14:00 CET – Virtual Seminar – Presenter: Christina Roberts (University of California, Santa Barbara). Paper: NASA’s Spacemobile – Science Diplomacy of the everyday

3 April 2025, 14:00 CET – Virtual Seminar – Presenter: Luca Forgiarini (Utrecht University). Paper: Building the pyramid: CERN and the Europeanisation of high-energy physics in the 1960s and 1970s

5 June 2025, 14:00 CET – STAND Early Career Prize Session – Presenter: Dr. Ezequiel Sosiuk (Universidad Maimónides & CONICET), prize winner- Paper: Diplomatic concepts: origins and consequences of the United States-Brazil Shrimp Conservation Agreement (1972-1977)

Second presenter: Jens Amborg (Uppsala University), honourable mention- Paper: Animal geopolitics: race smuggling and sheep diplomacy in eighteenth-century Europe

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Publications by ECR Seminar Presenters

Chu, Leo. “With and against the Grain: The Asian Vegetable Research and Development Center and Modest Narratives of Green Revolution in Taiwan, 1963–2002.” Agricultural History 97, no. 3 (2023): 448-477.

Forgiarini, Luca. ‘Unstable Bonds: CERN’s Relations with its Peripheral Member States, 1950s-1960s’, Journal of European Integration History. [2024 – under publication]

Freris, Loukas. “‘Through Diplomatic Channels’: Science, Diplomacy, and Greece’s Efforts for Election to the IAEA Board of Governors (1957–1961)”, in Diplomatic Studies of Science, edited by Maria Rentetzi. [under publication].

Gamito-Marques, Daniel. “Between an Old and a New Scramble for Africa? Using the History of Science Diplomacy to Understand the Present” Histoire, Europe et Relations Internationales 2, 2 (2022): 53-63. 

Hof, Barbara. “Particles, Purity, Politics: Expanding International Exchange in High-Energy Physics during the Cold War”. In Globalizing Physics: One Hundred Years of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics, ed. Roberto Lalli & Jaume Navarro, 192-208. Oxford University Press, 2024.

Martínez-Rius, Beatriz. Making the Seafloor. French Geologists, Marine Resources, and New Deep Territories (1945-1975) [theses.hal.science]. PhD Thesis, Sorbonne University (Paris), June 22, 2022.

Naisbitt, Alice. “Science for peace? A History of the British Council’s Cultural Relations” British Council Cultural Relations Collection (2023).

Panoutsopoulos, Grigoris. “Investigating CERN’s Science Diplomacy in the Midst of the Cold War: The Case of the CERN-Serpukhov Experiment”, in Diplomatic Studies of Science, edited by Maria Rentetzi. [under publication].

Silva, Luciana Vieira Souza da. “Diplomacia científica e história das ciências: reflexões teóricas e metodológicas”. Temáticas. 30, nº 60, (2022): 70-101.

Background to ECS Initiatives

Postgraduate students and early career (unestablished) scholars are an important part of the STAND community. The Commission has sought to support them through a range of initiatives. This has included holding a science diplomacy-focused Global Online Workshop on 23 July 2020 for postgraduate and early career scholars. From April to November 2023, STAND organized a book writing workshop to offer mutual feedback on ongoing book proposals to focus on developing writing skills.

Thanks to generous funding from the DHST, we have been able to regularly offer travel bursaries supporting postgraduate and early career participants in order to support them presenting at STAND-sponsored panels, symposia, and conferences.

ECS Prize

Since 2022, STAND has awarded an annual early career scholars prize, recognising outstanding papers addressing the history of science, technology and medicine in their international contexts. You can find more information about the prize here.