This project has received funding via the EUI Research Council call 2024.
In 1945, 37 countries signed the UNESCO statement to uphold ‘peace and security by collaboration among nations through education, science and culture.’ This is the project’s starting point to investigate the intersection of higher education, nationalism, and internationalism in the 1940s as nations and the new international order began to implement plans for the future. While the existing historiography of this period focuses on the implementation of the Marshall Plan and the beginnings of the Cold War, the research will reveal that investment in higher education was a priority for post-war reconstruction. The 1940s saw growing European and international appreciation for the role of vocational and higher education, and the development of expertise and knowledge, as key components of post-war reconstruction.
For European nations such as Italy and Germany, and those occupied by fascist forces, increased access to higher education was a path for social and cultural renewal and as security against the spread of ideologies of fascism and communism, especially amongst youth. For Allied nations, including the US and across Britain and its Commonwealth, the focus was on the protection of democracy, as well as training a modern skilled and expert workforce.
The research project, and the resulting symposium, takes this lens to re-examine the decade of post-war planning which began prior to the end of the war, and unfolded when Europe and the world was not yet fully shaped by Cold War mentalities. Taking a comparative approach, it will explore various national, transnational, and international reconstruction programs that underscored the importance of higher education and knowledge in the reshaping of societies utilising the EUI as a focus of the development of Higher Education in Europe and its EU archives.