Sara Meloni

My dissertation analyzes aspects of the radical science movement of the 1960s and 1970s through a transnational perspective, focusing in particular on the connections and mutual influences between Italian and US radical scientists. It is organized around five episodes in which collectives of scientists, physicians, and workers advanced a radical anti-capitalist critique of science. In some cases, these collaborations gave rise to non-hierarchical research practices that challenged traditional ideas of expertise. The project complicates understandings of the radical science movement as primarily a product of the student protests of 1968 by showing its relationships with the Italian workers’ movement since the early 1960s. Drawing from archival documents, oral histories, published materials, and audiovisual sources from both Italy and the US, my dissertation contributes to the scholarship on the history of social movements, labor history, environmental history, as well as the history of science and medicine during the Cold War.