24 November 2025, 16:15-17:45 (in person)

FU Berlin, FMI, Room A336, Koserstr. 20, 14195 Berlin

Based on extensive research on the Hungarian mission to North Korea between 1950-57 (memoirs, archival documents, diaries, oral history interviews, photographs, news media), through the everyday life of the Hungarian field hospital this paper considers the Korean War as a key event in establishing the socialist world on the one hand, and creating approaches for solidarity interventions on the other. The medical intervention was part of a larger project of socialist internationalism, and the first instance in which socialist countries collaborated actively in the realm of health. Bringing together most of Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, China and North Korea, this venture laid foundations for further cooperation for the countries that found themselves outside of the new, liberal international order.

Dora Vargha is a historian of medicine, science and technology, with expertise in the history of epidemics, the politics of health, and Cold War history. She is Professor of History and Medical Humanities at the University of Exeter, where she is principal investigator of the Wellcome Trust-funded research project ‘Connecting Three Worlds’ and is co-investigator on the 'After the End' research project based at Oxford University. Since 2021, she has been leading the ERC Starting Grant research group ‘Socialist Medicine’ at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin’s chair for the history of science. Dora Vargha’s research is informed by gender history, history of childhood and disability history, and is in conversation with medical anthropology, sociological approaches and political science. She is co-editor of the Cambridge History of Medicine at Cambridge University Press and of the book series Epidemic Histories at Johns Hopkins University Press. Her research has been awarded several international awards, including the 2020 Medical Humanities Award for Best International Research by the AHRC and Wellcome Trust and the 2019 Book Prize of the European Association for the History of Medicine and Health.

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