Biography
Mikuláš Pešta is an assistant professor at the Institute of History at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University. He completed his Ph.D. in 2017. In 2018, he worked as a post-doctoral research associate in the ‘Socialism Goes Global’ project at the University of Exeter. Since 2019, he has worked at the Faculty of Arts and, since 2023, also at the Institute of Contemporary History, Czech Academy of Sciences. He was a co-PI of a Czech-Swiss bilateral grant project on student internationalism and in 2026, he published his second book entitled Student Internationalism and the Global Cold War. The International Union of Students in Socialist Prague. In 2024, he held a semestral fellowship at the Research Center for the History of Transformations (RECET) at the University of Vienna. He is the deputy director of the Cold War Research Group.
Research interests:
- In his Ph.D. thesis, he investigated the transnational terrorist network in Western Europe, the interconnectedness of individual militant organizations, mutual ideological influence, and the import of the ideas of irregular fight from the Third World.
- He focuses on the contacts between Czechoslovakia (Central Eastern Europe) and African and Asian countries and national liberation movements in the field of education (students and experts both in Czechoslovakia and in the Third World), cultural diplomacy, ideology, or secret services.
- Currently, he researches the role of Prague-based international organizations and student internationalism during the Cold War and beyond.