Student Networks and Trajectories
Research project of Crafting Entanglements: Afro-Asian Pasts of the Global Cold War (CRAFTE)
The project traces the lived realities of "Afro-Asian students" and trainees during the Cold War. Building on work on Afro-Asian students in the GDR and FRG, the project aims to show how these actors were integrated into networks and institutional and administrative frameworks, and what resources they used to influence these in return - not as passive recipients of global bloc politics, but as translocal actors who transcended traditional readings of East-West, North-South and centre-periphery. The focus lies on the social, political and cultural curricula which guided and shaped these young people and their future lives.
The research traces the stations a young person coming to one of the German states for educational purposes would have undergone - from developing the intention to go abroad, to deciding weather or not to return to the old or remain in the new home once the intended education programme finished. A particular focus lies on the groups and networks such a person might have been situated in - student unions, political organisations, performance groups, editorial boards - as well as the social, cultural, and political curricula accompanying their formal education.
Following these steps and connections, the project will unearth the entangled identity/ies of the individual, that might connect them to ideas of nation, region, ideology, religion, culture, love, family, and other forms of belonging. In addition, the comparison of similar stations in the life of people who are of similar age and share the stated intention of educating themselves abroad, but are dispersed across different temporal and systemic contexts, allows conclusions regarding the cultural, political, and societal conditions of the time.
Archives visited
Bundesarchiv, Berlin
Ajoy Bhavan, Delhi
P. C. Joshi Archive, JNU, Delhi
Asiatic Society, Kolkata