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The Power of Systems: How Policy Sciences Opened Up the Cold War World

05 December 2016, 6:30 pm–8:00 pm

The Power of Systems…

Event Information

Location

Room 433, UCL SSEES

In this talk, Dr. Egle Rindzeviciute will discuss her new book 'The Power of Systems' (Cornell UP, 2016).  In The Power of Systems, Egle Rindzeviciute introduces readers to one of the best-kept secrets of the Cold War: the International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis, an international think tank established by the U.S. and Soviet governments to advance scientific collaboration.

From 1972 until the late 1980s IIASA in Austria was one of the very few permanent platforms where policy scientists from both sides of the Cold War divide could work together to articulate and solve world problems.  The book shows how computer modeling, cybernetics, and the systems approach challenged Soviet governance by undermining the linear notions of control on which Soviet governance was based and creating new objects and techniques of government.

About the speaker: Dr. Egle Rindzeviciute trained in art history, management and political science in Vilnius, Moscow and Budapest, before receiving a PhD in Culture Studies from Linköping University in Sweden, 2008. She is now a Lecturer in Sociology at Kingston University, London. She is also affiliated as a honorary research fellow with the Gothenburg Research Institute (GRI), the University of Gothenburg and she is an Associate Professor (docent) at the Department for Studies of Culture & Social Change, Linköping University, Sweden. Dr. Rindzeviciute is a friend of the Fringe Centre at UCL SSEES. 

A seminar hosted by the UCL SSEES Russian Studies Seminar Series.

Convenors: Philippa Hetherington (UCL SSEES) and Simon Huxtable (Loughborough)