Seminario: Refugee Scholars: Rethinking the République des lettres in the Twentieth-Century

SEMINARIO

‘Refugee Scholars: Rethinking the “République des lettres” in
the Twentieth-Century’

Agustí Nieto-Galan

12/01/24, 11:30h

~
 

In the central decades of the twentieth century, the aid to academic refugees who escaped from dictatorial regimes that prosecuted them for their race, religion or political ideology became a relevant scientific, political, and diplomatic question. As a new “Republic of Letters”, numerous individuals and organizations provided shelter, help and grants, initially for those escaping from Nazi Germany, and later for those suffering the tragic consequences of the war and post-war. From Hitler's rise to power in 1934 to the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956, more than twenty years of dramatic upheavals and human suffering brought many brilliant minds to exile in desperate need of help.  

From a postcolonial perspective, this paper presents a new research project that aims to critically analyse the circulation of refugee scholars in the central decades of the 20^th century as a source of coproduction of new knowledge in different fields. It also emphasizes the potential interest of the Archive of the Society for the Protection of Science and Learning (Bodleian Library, Oxford). The SPSL was founded in the UK, in 1933, by a small group of academics (Leo Szilard and Lord Rutherford, among others) to provide short-term grants and help refugees in finding new employment.

~

Agustí Nieto-Galan is Professor of History of Science at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), ICREA Acadèmia Fellow (2009 & 2018), and former director of the Institute d'Història de la Ciència (iHC) at the UAB (2020-23). He has written widely on the history of chemistry, the history of the popularization of science (18th-20th centuries), and the relation between science and power in the twentieth century. Among his last books it is worth mentioning: The Politics of Chemistry (Cambridge, 2019), Tóxicos invisibles (Icaria, 2020) and The Land of the Hunger Artists (Cambridge, 2023). 
Research output: https://portalrecerca.uab.cat/en/persons/agusti-nieto-galan-3