The new special issue of the Hungarian Historical Review, Knowledge Transfer and Cultural Mediators: Mobility, Networks, and Transnational Lives presents five fascinating studies on how ideas, people, and cultural practices move across borders.
Kornel Trojan’s article follows Ludwig Gumplowicz’s intellectual trajectory from Krakow to Graz and Italy, showing how his conflict theory shaped early Italian elite sociology. The study reframes peripheries not as passive recipients but as active hubs of intellectual circulation. Raluca-Maria Trifa explores industrial architecture across the Habsburg Empire, examining developments from Brno through Pécs and Timișoara to Rijeka. Her analysis shows that modernization was not a one-way center–periphery process, but a network of mutual adaptations and local innovations. Sebastian Willert examines forced knowledge transfer through the example of German-Jewish scholars who fled to Türkiye in the 1930s and 1940s. Focusing on Benno Landsberger and Fritz Rudolf Kraus, the article demonstrates how refugee scholars shaped Ancient Near Eastern studies within a new political and institutional environment.
Simo Mikkonen and Sampo Ikonen analyze Cold War cultural diplomacy through the history of the Petrozavodsk Finnish Theater. The minority institution’s tours in Finland created opportunities for language preservation, artistic renewal, and the development of transnational connections. John W. Bessai traces the role of the National Film Board of Canada in knowledge transfer, from documentary film to digital interactive projects, showing how media technologies shape community engagement and cultural dialogue.
Edited by Szabolcs László, research fellow of our institute, this rich special issue offers new perspectives on the histories of mobility, mediation, and transnational lives. The full issue is available here.
