Science, Gender, Internationalism: A Transnational History of Female Academic Networking, 1917-1968

My book project explores the forging of a transatlantic world of science and higher learning in the twentieth century and its lasting impact on Germany from a gendered perspective. It is an account of the formation and fortunes of a new, international community of women, the International Federation of University Women (IFUW). I reconstruct how the IFUW took shape, and track the Federation’s activities across five decades, examining the shifting political, social, and intellectual contexts in which it operated. The work deals with the actors and concepts, programs and strategies of the Anglo-American dominated umbrella organization, but with special attention to what the IFUW meant for female academics and scholars from Continental Europe, and particularly for those from Germany. The entangled past of the IFUW and Germany reveals a history of a female academic network across national borders and academic cultures, scientific disciplines, and generations. This holds especially true for the period from 1933 to 1945, when the IFUW became an Atlantic, later global network for female academic refugee aid from German persecution. 

A German version of the book will be published by Wallstein (Göttingen) in 2012. An English version is in preparation.