Eszter D Kovacs

Research Topic

NASA’s Normality: Gender, Race, and Culture in the US Cold War, 1957-1969

Supervisor: Uta Balbier

My DPhil project aims to uncover how the early period of the US space programme mirrored wider notions of "normality" in a cultural Cold War context. I plan to analyse not just how activist groups in America viewed and critiqued NASA's projects and hiring practices, but also how these were perceived in the Eastern Bloc. 

Before my DPhil, I completed an MSt in Women's, Gender, and Queer History at Oxford (2024), where I focused on the history of abortion legislation and women's activism in state-socialist Hungary. I hold a BA in History with Spanish from University College London (2023). During my undergraduate degree I also focused on the history of gender and race, as my thesis investigated the intellectual history of intersectionality within American feminist groups in the 1970s-1980s. Overall, I am very interested in the history of marginalised activism, as well as the cultural history of the Cold War in America and in Eastern Europe - all of which I hope to bring together within my DPhil project.