Institute of Contemporary History

Research Interests:

• Czechoslovakia in Global History
• History of Student Internationalism and International Organizations
• Terrorism and Political Violence

Education:

• 2013-2017: Ph.D. in General History, FF UK
• 2011-2013: Master studies in History, FF UK
• 2008-2011: Bachelor studies in History, FF UK

Employment:

• 2023-2025: Institute for Contemporary History, grant project investigator
• 2019-now: Institute of World History FF UK, assistant professor
• 2018: University of Exeter, postdoctoral research associate in the Socialism Goes Global project

Positions and Membership in Organizations:

• Deputy Head of the Cold War Research Group, Charles University

Study and Research Stays Abroad:

• 2024: Semestral stay at the Research Center for the History of Transformations, Universität Wien
• 2024: One-week research stay in New York (UN Archive)
• 2023: Two-week research stay in Ethiopia
• 2023: One-week research stay in Berlin (Bundesarchiv)
• 2023. Two-week research stay in Rome (Archivio della Camera dei deputati, Archivio Gramsci) and Florence (Historical Archives of the European Union)
• 2022: Two-week research stay on Madagascar
• 2021: One-month SNF research grant at Université Fribourg
• 2021: Two-week research stay in Paris (UNESCO, Cité des mémoires étudiants) and Amsterdam (IASH)
• 2020: Three-week research stay in Moscow (RGANI)
• 2019: One-week research stay in Hamburg (Institut für Sozialforschung)
• 2017: One-month research internship at Universität zu Köln
• 2016: Two-week research stay in Rome (Archivio centrale, Archivio Gramsci)
• 2015: Semestral research scholarship of Hermann und Else Schnabel Stiftung at Universität Hamburg
• 2015: Two-week research stay in Bern (Bundesarchiv) and Zurich (Sozialarchiv)
• 2015: One-week research stay in Berlin (APO Archiv)
• 2014: One-month research internship at Universität zu Köln
• 2014: Two-week research stay in Rome (Archivio Gramsci, Archivio Sturzo) and Bologna (Archivio Parri)
• 2012-2013: Semestral scholarship at Università di Bologna (Erasmus)
• 2011: One-month scholarship at Universität Regensburg
• 2011: One-week research stay in London (Kew)

Research projects:

• 2023-2025: GAČR-SNF, Swiss-Czech bilateral project From Student Internationalism to Erasmus: Globalization and Europeanization of Student Life since 1945, main investigator in the Czech part of the team
• 2021-2023: PRIMUS, African and Middle Eastern Elites Educated in former Socialist Countries: Studies, Trajectories, and Mindsets, team member
• 2019-2023: UNCE, Center for the Transdisciplinary Research of Violence, Trauma and Justice (Charles University Center of Excellence), junior team member
• 2019-2022: Relations in the Ideoscape: Middle Eastern Students in the Eastern Block (1950s to 1991), Max Weber Foundation, external team member
• 2014-2016: GAUK, Left-Wing Terrorism and Political Violence in Western Europe in the 1970s, main investigator

Books:

• O ozbrojeném boji v západní Evropě. Italský a německý levicový terorismus sedmdesátých let v transnacionální perspektivě, Praha: FF UK, 2018.

Editorial work:

• Guest editor in Prague Papers on the History of International Relations, 1-2/2021, special issue: Czechoslovak experts in Africa

Articles:

• Matthieu Gillabert, Lidia Lesnykh, Mikuláš Pešta, Student Internationalism in the Global Cold War. The Foundation and Split of the International Union of Students, in Sandrine Kott, Eva-Maria Muschik, Elisabeth Roehrlich (eds.), Internaitonal Organizations and the Cold War. Competition, Cooperation, and Convergence, Bloomsbury 2025, 131-144.
• Mikuláš Pešta, Hub of Anti-Colonialism: Prague’s International Organizations in the Transnational Socialist Network and Global Cold War, in Journal of Contemporary History 59/3 (2024), 492-513.
• Mikuláš Pešta, Expert Knowledge and Socialist Virtues: Czechoslovak Military Specialists in the Global South, in Roth-Ey, K. (ed.), Second-Third World Spaces in the Cold War: Global Socialism and the Gritty Politics of the Particular, London: Bloomsbury, 2023, 139-158.
• Mikuláš Pešta, Reluctant Revolutionaries: Czechoslovak Support of Revolutionary Violence between Decolonization and Détente, in Intelligence and National Security, 37/7 (2022), 1003-1019.
• Mikuláš Pešta, The Leftist “Imagined Community”. The Transnational Imagination of Left-Wing Subversive Organizations in Western Europe, in Historical Reflections/Réflexions Historiques, 48/2 (2022), 79-104.
• Mikuláš Pešta, L’internationalisme tchécoslovaque en Afrique à travers l’exemple de l’aide à la construction d’infrastructures militarires et de securité en Guinée, 1958-1965, in Matthieu Boisdron and Krisztián Bene, Marges impériales en dialogue. Échanges, transferts, interactions et influences croisés entre les espaces postcoloniaux francophones et la périphérie soviétique européenne dans la seconde moitié du XXe siècle, Université de Pécs, 2022, 159-170.
• Mikuláš Pešta, Czechoslovakia, Eastern Bloc and Expert Missions in Africa. Introduction to the Special Issue, in Prague Papers on the History of International Relations, 1-2 (2021), 7-18.
• Mikuláš Pešta, Polozapomenutý listopad. Mezinárodní den studentstva a jeho překrývaná paměť, in Paměť a dějiny 3/2021, 90-100.
• Jan Koura a Mikuláš Pešta, Československo a studená válka v Africe. Přístupy, interpretace a roviny zkoumání, in Paměť a dějiny 14/3 (2020), 3–13.
• Mikuláš Pešta, Mezi solidaritou, obchodem a politikou. Vojenský výcvik Afričanů v Československu v šedesátých letech, in Paměť a dějiny 14/3 (2020), 24–32.
• Daniela Richterova, Mikuláš Pešta, Natalia Telepneva, Banking on Military Assistance: Czechoslovakia’s Struggle for Influence and Profit in the Third World 1955–1968, in International History Review 43, no. 1 (2021), 90–108.
• Kelsey Landau, Norman Eisen, Mikuláš Pešta, The Aftermath of Revolution. U.S. Support for Czech and Slovak Liberal Democracy, 1989–Present, in Norman Eisen (ed.), Democracy’s Defenders. U.S. Embassy Prague, the Fall of Communism in Czechoslovakia, and Its Aftermath, Washington 2020, 161-188.
• Mikuláš Pešta, Sanctuary, Armoury, and Prison. Switzerland and Swiss Anarchists as Intermediaries in the European Terrorist Network in the 1970s, in Central European History 52 (2019), 672–688.
• Mikuláš Pešta, Giangiacomo Feltrinelli: Život a smrt extravagantního miliardáře, neúspěšného revolucionáře a sponzora evropského terorismu, in Bárta, M. – Kovář, M. (eds.), Lidé a dějiny. K roli osobnosti v historii v multidisciplinární perspektivě, Praha 2017, 781–802.
• Mikuláš Pešta, Rozzuřená generace. Revoluční násilí a terorismus ve Velké Británii na počátku sedmdesátých let, in Koura, J., Tumis, S., Soukup, J. (eds.), Kapitoly z britských a amerických dějin, Praha 2015, 202–214.
• Mikuláš Pešta, Levicový radikalismus v Itálii po roce 1968, in Škerlová, J. – Pokorná Korytarová, L. – Haváč, O. – Vitko, M. (eds.), Promýšlet Evropu 20. století. Konflikty beze zbraní, Brno 2015, 213–228.
• Mikuláš Pešta, The Origins of the Left-wing Terrorism in Italy after 1968, in Dvacáté století – The Twentieth Century, 2014/1.

Conferences and workshops:

• Transnational Networks and Anti-Colonial Production of Socialist International NGOs, paper presented at the annual conference of the Association of Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies, Boston, November 2024
• Student Internationalism and the Global Cold War: The Case of the International Union of Students. Invited lecture, University of Tübingen, July 2024
• Democratic International Organizations and the Transnational Socialist Network during the Cold War and Beyond. Paper presented to the workshop on “Recolonizing Empires during the Cold War: Transitional Social Movements and Social Policy in Post-colonial Areas,” University of Utrecht, May 2024
• Democratic international organizations, anti-colonial networks and transformations at the end of the Cold War. Paper presented at the “Harmful Entanglements” conference, Orient-Institut Istanbul, May 2024
• The International Union of Students and Student Internationalism in the Cold War. Invited lecture, University of Vienna, April 2024
• Africans and the Media of the “Communist Geneva”. The Role of Africans in the Communication of the International Organizations Based in Socialist Czechoslovakia, na konferenci Africa and the Global Cold War III, Universität Erfurt, 22–24 September 2022
• Pražské mezinárodní organizace a studená válka, na Sjezdu českých historiků, UJEP Ústí nad Labem, 20-22 September 2022
• A Gate for socialism in Africa: Czechoslovak developmentalism in Guinea on the example of Czechoslovak security school in Kankan, 1958-1966 (s Janem Kourou), na workshopu The Socialist Countries and the Third World: Recent Approaches and New Perspectives, FF UK, 8-9 September 2022
• Cold War Developmentalism: Czechoslovak Infrastructure Building in West Africa, na konferenci Socialist (Dis)Connections, RECET, Universität Wien, 27-28 June 2022
• International Union of Students: Strategies of Legitimization from Prague to the global Cold War (s Matthieu Gillabertem), na konferenci ‘Divided Together’? International Organizations and the Cold War, Universität Wien, 2-3 June 2022
• Roundtable Soviet and Eastern European Intelligence in the Global South: A Reassessment, BASEEES Conference, University of Cambridge, 8-10 April 2022
• „The World Marxist Review as a Cosmopolitan Space in Socialist Prague. Naim Ashhab and the Middle Eastern Delegates in the Editorial Office of a Global Journal“ , na workshopu Relations in the Ideoscape: Middle Eastern Students in the Eastern Bloc, CEU Budapest, 24-26 February 2022
• Czechoslovakia’s Struggle for Influence and Profit in the Third World, at The Soviet Union’s Relations with their Allies, University of Glasgow, 10 December 2021 (online)
• Africans in the International Union of Students and Cold War Internationalism, konference Viva Africa, Univerzita Karlova, Praha, 16-17 September 2021
• The World Marxist Review as a Cosmopolitan Space in Socialist Prague: Naim Ashhab and the Middle Eastern Delegates in the Editorial Office of a Global Journal, konference Contested Knowledge in a Connected World, Berlin, 16-17 September 2021
• L’Europe médiane et l’émergence du «tiers-monde»: Développementalisme et anti-impérialisme. L’exemple de la Tchécoslovaquie, Université Fribourg, 17 May 2021
• Naim Ashhab and the editorial office of the World Marxist Review, workshop Relations in the Ideoscape: Middle Eastern Students in the Eastern Bloc (1950’s to 1991), University of Sofia St. Kliment Ohridsky, 22–24 July 2021
• Prague as International Socialist Space, na workshopu Relations in the Ideoscape: Middle Eastern Students in the Eastern Block, Orient-Institut Beirut, May 2019
• Czechoslovak Experts in the Third World: The Case of the Military Technical College in Cairo na workshopu Eastern Bloc and the Third World, November 2018, Filozofická fakulta Univerzity Karlovy
• Prague Calling Africa and Asia. Czechoslovakia’s self-presentation in the Third World na konferenci Socialist Cultural Diplomacy of the ХХth century: institutes, actors, discourses, October 2018, Deutsches Historisches Institut Moskau
• Czechoslovak Spies on the “Black Continent”: Strategy and Activities of Czechoslovak Intelligence in Africa in the 1960s (s Janem Kourou) na konferenci Secret Struggle for the Global South, September 2018, University of Warwick
• Tricontinental as a Radicalization Factor of the Left-wing Terrorist Groups in Europe na konferenci Legacies of the Tricontinental, 1966-2016: Imperialism, Resistance, Law, September 2016, Universidade de Coimbra
• Levicový radikalismus v Itálii po roce 1968 na konferenci Promýšlet Evropu 20. století. Konflikty beze zbraní, April 2014, Masarykova Univerzita, Brno