Mikuláš Pešta works as an assistant professor at the Institute of World History at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University and as a researcher at the Institute of Contemporary History, Czech Academy of Science. He completed his Ph.D. in 2017. Since then, he worked as a post-doctoral research associate in the ‘Socialism Goes Global’ project at the University of Exeter. 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. Furthermore, 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.

Selected publications:

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

Reluctant Revolutionaries: Czechoslovak Support of Revolutionary Violence between Decolonization and Détente, in Intelligence and National Security, 37/7 (2022), 1003-1019, DOI: 10.1080/02684527.2022.2098551

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, DOI: 10.3167/hrrh.2022.480205

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 Boisdron, M. – Bene, K. (eds.), Marges impériales en dialogue. Échangesm 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.

Czechoslovakia, Eastern Bloc and Expert Missions to Africa. An Introduction to the Special Issue, in Prague Papers on the History of International Relations, 1-2/2021 (incl. edition of the special issue), 7–18

Banking on Military Assistance: Czechoslovakia’s Struggle for Influence and Profit in the Third World 1955–1968 (with Daniela Richterova and Natalia Telepneva), in International History Review 43, no. 1 (2021), 90–108. DOI: 10.1080/07075332.2020.1763422

The Aftermath of Revolution. U.S. Support for Czech and Slovak Liberal Democracy, 1989–Present (with Kelsey Landau and Norman Eisen), in Norman Eisen (ed.), Democracy’s Defenders. U.S. Embassy Prague, the Fall of Communism in Czechoslovakia, and Its Aftermath, Washington 2020, 161-188.

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.

ORCID: 0000-0002-6817-5101