How was Geneva’s Institut de hautes études internationales (now, the Geneva Graduate Institute) involved in the making of neoliberalism, from the 1930s and the emergence of the “Geneva School” to the post-World War II road to Mont-Pélerin? And how does this history fit more broadly into the trajectories of neoliberalism, helping us understand the connection between the globalism of the League of Nations and the birth of neoliberalism?

Panel Discussion:

• Quinn Slobodian, Professor of International History, Boston University, and
  author of Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism (2020)
• Sandrine Kott, Professor of Modern European History, University of
  Geneva/New York University
• Dieter Plehwe, Senior Research Fellow, Berlin Social Science Center (WZB)
• Alice Pirlot, Assistant Professor of International Law, Geneva Graduate
  Institute

This event will be introduced and moderated by Cyrus Schayegh, Professor of History at the Geneva Graduate Institute, and followed by questions and answers.

Biographies
 

Sandrine Kott is Professor of Modern European History at the University of Geneva and Global Distinguished Professor at New York University.  Her research focuses on the history of labor and social policy in capitalist and socialist societies. She is currently working on international organizations as sites for the circulation of knowledge and expertise in economic and social affairs. Among her last books: A World more Equal. An Internationalist Perspective on the Cold War, Columbia University press, 2004, Communism Day-to-Day, Michigan University press, 2014 ; Sozialstaat und Gesellschaft. Das deutsche Kaiserreich in Europa, Göttingen, Vandehoeck&Ruprecht, 2014, (ed. with Kiran Klaus Patel), Nazism across Borders. The Social Policies of the Third Reich and their Global Appeal, Oxford University Press, 2018, (ed. with Michel Christian and Ondrej Matejka), Planning in Cold War Europe, competition, cooperation, circulations, Oldenburg, De Gruyter, 2018. 

Alice Pirlot is an Assistant Professor at the Geneva Graduate Institute. Prior to joining the Institute, she was a Senior Research Fellow at the Oxford University Centre for Business Taxation and a Research Fellow with the National Belgian Fund for Scientific Research (FNRS). Her work focuses on issues at the intersection of international environmental law and international economic law. She has been a visiting researcher and/or lecturer at several institutions, including Queen Mary University of London, the Institute for Austrian and International Tax Law, the Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance, Lund University, and the University of Florida. She serves on the editorial boards of two journals: the Journal of International Economic Law and Intertax.

Dieter Plehwe is Senior Fellow at the research group "Globalization, Work, and Production" at the Berlin Social Science Center (WZB) and private lecturer at Kassel University, Institute of Political Science. He has researched the history and variety of neoliberalism and served as an author and (co-)editor of large number of articles and books including Neoliberal Hegemony: A Global Critique, The Road from Mont Pèlerin. The Making of the Neoliberal Thought Collective, Nine Lives of Neoliberalism and Market Civilizations. A Global Horizons senior fellow at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study 2023-24, he has held residential fellowships at Harvard University, New York University and the University of British Columbia. He is a Forum editor of the Journal Critical Policy Studies.

Cyrus Schayegh (PhD, Columbia University, 2004) has been Professor of International History at the Geneva Graduate Institute since 2017. Before, he was Associate and Assistant Professor at Princeton University (2008-2017) and Assistant Professor at the American University of Beirut (2005-2008). His recent works include The Middle East and the Making of the Modern World (Harvard UP, 2017), a monograph; Globalizing the U.S. Presidency: Postcolonial Views of John F. Kennedy (Bloomsbury, 2020), an edited volume; and a collection of translated primary sources (Wilson Center, 2023) :  https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/essays/international-dimensions-decolonization-middle-east-and-north-africa-primary-source. Presently, he is writing an introductory book to transimperial history and editing a volume on the Cold War in MENA.

Quinn Slobodian is Professor of International History at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University. His books, which have been translated into ten languages, include Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism, Crack-Up Capitalism: Market Radicals and the Dream of a World without Democracy, and Hayek’s Bastards: Race, Gold, IQ and the Capitalism of the Far Right . A Guggenheim Fellow for 2025-6, he has been an associate fellow at Chatham House and held residential fellowships at Harvard University and Free University Berlin. Project Syndicate put him on a list of 30 Forward Thinkers and Prospect UK named him one of the World’s 25 Top Thinkers.