with Helmut Trischler

Building Europe on Expertise. Innovators, Organizers, Networkers documents the vital role of technoscientific experts in Europe’s Long Twentieth Century. The book analyses experts as innovators, as organizers, and as networkers. It examines the ways in which nation states sought to harness experts knowledge for the purpose of serving particular national interests—of extending the nation’s prestige and power. The book also analyze the counterpoint to this nationalism: the trans nationalism which linked European countries to one another—and connected Europe to the rest of the world. This transnationalism was at times voluntary and deliberate, but it was often a mere byproduct of experts’ various projects. This theme of inextricable nationalism and transnationalism pervades every chapter of the book. The book claims that the building of Europe’s individual nation states and the creation of cross-national networks, organizations, and institutions—also referred to as Europeanization and European integration—are interconnected processes, both featuring technoscientific experts as the main actors. For this reason the book challenge the view that nationalism and transnationalism were opposing forces during Europe’s Long Twentieth Century. In this narrative, the term “European” not only stretches the usual geography but also includes social meanings, cultural connotations, and sociopolitical identities.