This study considers the history of educational politics and academic cultures in Central Europe, Britain, the United States, France, and other Atlantic nations. The account opens with the emergence of a new, transnational female academic network in 1917. Initially an Anglo-American undertaking supporting the war efforts of the Entente, the International Federation of University Women (IFUW) founded in 1919 in London aimed at bridging the fault lines of the Great War. To achieve sweeping professional and social change, the IFUW brought together what its leadership regarded as a female elite of world citizens, women committed to promoting higher education as a means to international understanding. Founded to erase Imperial Germany's lead in science -- and to abolish Germany's particular appeal to scientifically minded young American women -- in the 1920s the IFUW set out to reconstruct Europe according to a shared vision of scientific rationalism. Equal to the challenges posed by German aggression in two world wars, the IFUW's network collapsed under the weight of the ideological divisions created by the Cold War.

The book will be published by Palgrave/Macmillan in July 2014.