The group discusses research on the Cold War as a global history of the conflict that took place between 1945 and 1990. The research agenda is far broader than diplomatic, military, and intelligence histories of the conflict. This agenda spans across cultural landscapes, transnational history of “border-crossings,” ideological currents and propaganda, economic developments, impact of international finances, exploration of political persecution, refugees, gender-related issues, decolonisation, and more.
The members of the Cluster include several board members of Cold War History, an influential quarterly that publishes scholarship in the field. They also engaged with the research seminars HY509 and HY510.
The main objectives of the cluster are to share information among faculty members and across the School, improve supervision of doctoral students, spot innovative works-in-progress, and arrange discussions with their authors.
Spokesperson: Professor Vladislav Zubok
Keywords: Cold War, United States, Soviet Union, Middle East, Europe, Latin America, communism, culture, decolonisation, diplomacy, gender, human rights, identity, intelligence, integration, modernisation, natural resources, nuclear weapons, race, solidarity, war.
Dr Roham Alvandi
Associate Professor
Research interests:
Iran; Modern Middle East; Cold War
Professor Nigel Ashton
Professor of International History
Research interests:
Anglo-American Relations; Modern Middle-East
Dr Tanya Harmer
Associate Professor
Research Interests:
Latin America; Cold War
Dr Elizabeth Ingleson
Assistant Professor
Research interests:
United States History; Chinese History; Trade; Labour; Diplomacy; Multinational Corporations
Professor Matthew Jones
Professor of International History
Research interests:
British Foreign and Defence Policy since the Second World War; Nuclear History during the Cold War; Vietnam War; British Decolonisation and South East Asia; US Foreign Relations since 1941; Anglo-American Relations
Professor N. Piers Ludlow
Professor of International History
Research interests:
Western Europe since 1945; European Integration; Cold War Transatlantic Relations; Britain in the EC/EU
Dr Victoria Phillips
Visiting Fellow
Research interests:
Cold War; Cultural Diplomacy; International Relations; Gender and Biography
Dr Artemis Photiadou
Assistant Professor
Research interests:
Britain and Europe; European Political Regimes; Intelligence History
Dr Svetozar Rajak
Associate Professor
Research interests:
Cold War; Eastern Europe; Balkans
Professor Aino Rosa Kristina Spohr
Professor of International History
Research interests:
Germany Post-1945; Summit Diplomacy; Global Cold War Exits; World Order & Strategy; Arctic Affairs
Dr Qingfei Yin
Assistant Professor
Research interests:
Cold War; China; Vietnam; China-Southeast Asia Relations; Borderlands
2021/22:
2020/21:
- 29 April 2021: Professor Manu Bhagavan (City University of New York), and Dr Taylor C. Sherman (LSE International History) - GloBio Talk: The Most Remarkable Woman: The International Life and Diplomacy of Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit
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22 April 2021: Professor Mary Dudziak (Emory University School of Law), Laura Spinney, Paula Larsson (University of Oxford), Emeritus Professor Michel Goldman (Université Libre de Bruxelles), Dr Michael Reynolds (LSE International History) - History, Culture and Diplomacy Series: Waiting with Godot?: Pandemic Endings in Perspective
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8 February 2021: Dr Teasel Muir-Harmony (Smithsonian) - Book Talk: Operation Moonglow: A Political History of Project Apollo
- 30 November 2020: Dr Kaeten Mistry (University of East Anglia) Dr Hannah Gurman (New York University) and Professor Andrew Preston (University of Cambridge) - Book Talk: Whistleblowing Nation: The History of US National Security Disclosures
- 19 November 2020: Dr Margaret Peacock (University of Alabama), Dr Audra J. Wolfe, Dr Patryk Babiracki (University of Texas-Arlington), Professor Blanche Wiesen Cook (City University of New York) - History, Culture and Diplomacy Series: "Mind the Gap": New Directions in History, Culture and Diplomacy in a Time of COVID
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17 November 2020: Dr Simon Miles (Duke University) - Book Talk: The Beginning of the End of the Cold War
- 27 October 2020: Professor Kiran Patel (Ludwig Maximilian University), Dr Eirini Karamouzi (Sheffield University), Professor Mary Nolan (NYU) - Book Talk: Project Europe: Success or Failure?
- 20 October 2020: Dr Stephen Wertheim (Columbia) - Book Talk: How the United States Decided to Dominate the World
- 15 October 2020: Dr Michael Brenes (Yale University) - Book Talk: How the Global Cold War Remade American Politics
2019/20:
2018/19:
2017/18:
- Roham Alvandi (2014) Nixon, Kissinger, and the Shah: The United States and Iran in the Cold War. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK.
- Nigel Ashton (2008) King Hussein of Jordan: a political life. Yale University Press, New Haven, Connecticut, USA.
- Nigel Ashton (2022) False Prophets: British Leaders' Fateful Fascination with the Middle East from Suez to Syria. Atlantic Books, London, UK, 2022.
- Ashton, Nigel and Aldous, Richard (2022) David Reynolds: Studies in Competitive Co-operation. Diplomacy and Statecraft, 33:1, 1-18. This is part of a special issue that Professor Ashton co-edited under the same name.
- Tanya Harmer (2011) Allende's Chile and the Inter-American Cold War. University of Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA.
- Elizabeth Ingleson (2021) "The Invisible Hand of Diplomacy: Chinese Textiles and American Manufacturing in the 1970s". Pacific Historical Review, 90:3.
- Elizabeth Ingleson (2022) "US-China Relations in the Cold War: Bridging Two Eras," Tyson Reeder (ed.). Routledge History of U.S. Foreign Relations
- Matthew Jones (2017) The Official History of the UK Strategic Nuclear Deterrent, Volume I: From the V-Bomber Era to the Arrival of Polaris, 1945-1964 and Volume II: The Labour Government and the Polaris Programme, 1964-1970. Routledge, London, UK.
- Matthew Jones (2021) '"The Blue-Eyed Boys’: The Heath Government, Anglo-American Relations, and the Bombing of North Vietnam in 1972', The International History Review (published online 1 June 2021)
- N. Piers Ludlow (2016) Roy Jenkins and the European Commission Presidency, 1976-1980: At the Heart of Europe. Palgrave, London, UK.
- N. Piers Ludlow (2020) ‘Solidarity, Sanctions and Misunderstanding: the European Dimension of the Falklands Crisis’, International History Review
- N. Piers Ludlow (2020) ‘A Double-Edged Victory: Fontainebleau and the Resolution of the British Budget Problem, 1983-84’ in M. Gehler (ed.), Reshaping Europe: Towards a Political, Economic and Monetary Union, 1984-1989, Nomos, Germany.
- Victoria Phillips (2020) Martha Graham's Cold War. The Dance of American Diplomacy. Oxford University Press, New York, USA.
- Svetozar Rajak (2010) Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union In the Early Cold War: Reconciliation, Comradeship, Confrontation, 1953-1957. Routledge, London, UK, and New York, New York, USA.
- Kristina Spohr (2016) The Global Chancellor: Helmut Schmidt and the Reshaping of the International Order. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK.
- Kristina Spohr (2022), 'With or without Russia? The Boris, Bill and Helmut Bromance and the Harsh Realities of Securing Europe in the Post-Wall World, 1990-1994', Diplomacy and Statecraft, 33:1, 158-193.
- Qingfei Yin (2020) 'From a Line on Paper to a Line in Physical Reality: Joint State-Building at the Chinese-Vietnamese Border, 1954-1957', Modern Asian Studies, 54:6.
- Vladislav Zubok (2007) A failed empire: the Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev. University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA.
- Vladislav Zubok (2017) The Idea of Russia: The Life and Work of Dmitry Likhachev, I.B. Tauris, London, UK.
- Vladislav Zubok (2021) Collapse. The Fall of the Soviet Union. Yale University Press, London, UK.
Dr Una Bergmane received the Emerging Scholar Grant from the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies (USA) in 2018.
Dr Victoria Phillips received the Harriman Institute Publication Grant in 2017 and a Rockefeller Archive Center Research Grant through the City of New York Graduate Center in 2022.
Dr Kristina Spohr is researching and writing on the global exit from the Cold War 1989 – 1992 with the financial support of the Leverhulme Trust. She is the 2018-19 Inaugural Helmut Schmidt Professor at Johns Hopkins SAIS, Washington DC.