American Foundations' Fellowship Programs: Transnational Circulations of Elites, Knowledge and Practices (20-21st centuries)

HURSDAY, NOVEMBER 23TH

8:45: Arrival of participants

9:00: Introduction to the conference (Ludovic Tournès, UNIGE)

Roundtable 1 (09:15-10:45): Philanthropy, internationalism, Americanization, globalization

Thomas David (UNIL), Chair

Ludovic Tournès (University of Geneva), American Philanthropy and the Global Governance of Science and Expertise

Anne-Emanuelle Birn (University of Toronto), Legacies and leftovers of Rocke-fellowships in/for Global Health.

John Krige (Georgia Institute of Technology), The Rockefeller Foundation as an agent of globalization and of an American-led liberal order.

10:45-11:00 coffee break

A worldwide database of Rockefeller fellows, 1920-1970 (11:00-11:30)

Presentation by Yi-Tang Lin (University of Zürich) & Pierre-Yves Saunier (CNRS)

11h30-13:00 Workshop 1: Managing Agriculture and Environment

Marianna Fenzi (UNIL), Chair

Flavio Madureira Heinz (Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro), Brazilian Fellows of the Rockefeller Foundation Agricultural programs, 1950-1970: towards a national scientific elite? A prosopographical approach

Diana Alejandra Méndez Rojas (UNAM), Modernizing Agriculture, Mobilizing Ideas: Trajectories of the Rockefeller Foundation's Agricultural Science Fellows in Mexico, 1940-1980

Hannah Tyler (UZH), A New Era of Agricultural Education: The Rockefeller Foundation’s and the academic formalization of international agricultural economics (1920-1970).                             

13:00-14:00 lunch break

14:00-15:30 Roundtable 2: Philanthropies, Governments and International Fellowship Policies 

Tomás Irish (Swansea University), Chair

Stuart Lane (UNIL/SNSF), Fellowships and academic careers: opportunities and challenges.

Christin Mays (Uppsala University), Have Money, Will Travel: Rockefeller Foundation Scholarships and Academic Exchange between Sweden and the United States, ca 1924–1960

Anton Tarradellas (UNIGE), Fellowships As Seen from the South: Playing the Cold War Competition and Reappropriating American Scholarship Programs in Africa (1960-1975).

15:30-15:45 coffee break

15:45-17:15 Workshop 2: Organizing Scientific Research, Exploring New Fields

Yi-Tang Lin (UZH), Chair

Adriana Minor (El Colegio de México), The Rockefeller Foundation (non)Policy toward Physics Research and Education in Latin America

Michael Barany (University of Edinburgh), Institutionalizing Internationalism: Rockefeller Philanthropy and the Economies of Scale in Mid-Century Mathematics

Vivek Neelankantan (University of Sydney), Rockefeller-Trained Indonesian Physicians, Nationalist Refashioning of Science and the Cold War (1945-65).

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 24^TH

9:30-11:00 Roundtable 3 Databases across Scales and Periods

Thomas David (UNIL), Chair

Béatrice Joyeux-Prunel (UNIGE), Tracking the Global Circulation of Art and Images with Semantic Web: The Artl@s and Visual Contagions Projects.

Madeleine Herren (UNIBAS), FOCAL - unfolding the social coherence of transit societies. The Asia Directories Database as an approach to analyse social fabrics beyond borders and territories

Kaspar Gubler (UNIBE), Repertorium Academicum (REPAC): Digital Reconstruction of Academic Spaces of Knowledge and Communication in Pre-Modern Europe (1250-1550).

Sophie Jones (University of Liverpool), Eighteenth-Century Libraries Online : Subscription Libraries, Reading Communities and Cultural Formation in the Anglophone Atlantic, 1731-1801.

11:00-11:15 coffee break

11:15-12:45 Workshop 3: Training Professionals

Pierre Yves Saunier (CNRS), Chair

Christine Peralta (Amherst College), Beyond U.S. Empire: How the Rockefeller Foundation Reshaped the Medical Geographies of Filipino Nursing

Ana Paula Korndörfer (Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos), “Individuals of Outstanding Promise”: The Rockefeller Foundation’s International Health Division and the Training of Health Officials in Brazil (1917-1951)

Shu-Ching Chang (Chang Gung University), Rockefeller Fellows, Chinese Elite Nurses and Shaping the Nursing Profession in Taiwan, 1949-1970s

12:45-14:00 lunch break

14h-15:30 Workshop 4: Development and Modernization of Societies and Cultures

Davide Rodogno (Geneva Graduate Institute), Chair

Mathilde Sigalas (UNIGE), Improving American archaeology abroad: endowments, fellowships and grants to the American School of Classical Studies at Athens (1927-1940).

Jayne Beilke (Ball State University), Remedy and Resistance: The General Education Board Special Scholarship Program and Public Health in the Southern United States Ali Erken (Marmara university), Rockefeller Fellows, Creative Minority and Modernization in Turkey

15:30-15:45 coffee break  

15h45-17h15 Roundtable 4: Fellows in Times of Crisis, Then and Now

Bela Kapossy (UNIL), Chair

Justine Faure (University of Lille), Financing academic mobility programs with the Soviet bloc during the Cold War, stakes and practices. The example of the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Ford Foundation.

Tamas Scheibner (Eotvos Lorand University), Refugees and Global Elites: Rockefeller Fellows and Grantees in Times of Crisis

Pascale Laborier (University of Paris-Nanterre), Scholars at risk in Syria, Turkey, and Ukraine today.

17:15 Conclusions

 

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 25^TH

9:00-11:30: Organizing a working group on the Rockefeller fellows database