Dr. Alexej Lochmatow

Education

• 2021 PhD from the University of Cologne (cotutelle with the Tadeusz Manteuffel Institute of History Polish Academy of Sciences); certificate „Doctor Europaeus“

• 2018 M. A. in the History of Knowledge from the Higher School of Economics (Moscow)

• 2017 M. A. in Cultural and Intellectual History between East and West from the University of Cologne

Relevant Experience

• Since 01/2024 Spokesperson for the PECEE research group

• 01/2025 - 09/2025 Assistant Researcher at the Chair for the History of Science, University of Erfurt

• 01/2023 – 12/2024 Walter Benjamin Fellow at the Chair for the History of Science, University of Erfurt

• 10/2021– 12/2022 Assistant Researcher at the Chair for the History of Science, University of Erfurt

• 03/2021– 09/2021 Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Erfurt

• 04/2018–03/2021 EUmanities Research Fellow at the Graduate School for the Humanities a.r.t.e.s. (The University of Cologne; the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 713600) 

• 10/2018– Associate Fellow at the Herder-Institut für historische Ostmitteleuropaforschung

• 01/2020–02/2020 Chercheur invité at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (Paris)

• 09/2017–12/2017 Assistant researcher at the Center for the History of Ideas and Sociology of Knowledge (Poletayev Institute for Theoretical and Historical Studies in the Humanities, Higher School of Economics, Moscow)

Fields of Reserach

• Modern and Contemporary History
• History of Knowledge
• History of Science
• History of Inteligence Reserach

The ‘Bodies’ of Intelligence and Their Environments: Palestine and Theories of ‘Intelligent’ Governance of Social Processes, 1870s–1930s

In my second book project, I examine theories of intelligence in scientific discourses in and on Palestine during the late nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century. While existing scholarship has primarily focused on individualised conceptions of intelligence as instruments of social differentiation and distinction, my project investigates intelligence as a means of social and political grouping and organisation. Rather than asking what intelligence is, the project asks who—or which social or political entity—was regarded in different theories as the actual bearer of intelligence. The project demonstrates that, in a variety of contexts, it was not individuals but rather humanity as a whole, civilisation, the state, race, the nation, society, social classes or social types, as well as occupational, age, and gender groups that were scientifically conceptualised as the bearers, or ‘bodies’, of distinct forms of intelligence. Since a dominant trend in the sciences of the period was to define intelligence in terms of the effectiveness with which it engaged with its environment, the conceptualisation of such ‘bodies’ of intelligence also entailed the construction of corresponding (political) theories of the environment. This aspect of the project sheds light on the hitherto understudied relationship between research on intelligence and the development of scientific and political theories of the environment. 

Moving beyond a focus on the leading figures of individual disciplinary canons, the project examines the largely forgotten debates published in scholarly journals in sociology, anthropology, biology, zoology, (social) psychology, and education, as well as monographs on intelligence in German, English, French, Polish, Russian, Yiddish, Hebrew, and Arabic. Drawing on these sources, the project reconstructs the history of intelligence discourses as a history of attempts to provide a scientific basis for organising and governing the major political and social transformations of Europe and the Middle East.

• 2023 Public Knowledge in Cold War Poland: Scholarly Battles and the Clash of Virtues, 1945-1956, London & New York: Routledge, Link 

• 2026 (in print) „Paradoksy adaptacji: Naukowe i polityczne konteksty działalności Stanisława Ehrlicha w okresie ‘Rewolucji łagodnej’ [Paradoxes of Adaptation: Academic and Political Contexts of Stanisław Ehrlich’s Activity During the ‘Gentle Revolution’]“, in: Naum Trajanovski and Jakub Szumski (eds), Prawo, władza, pluralizmy. Myśląc ze Stanisławem Ehrlichem [Law, Power, Pluralisms. Thinking with Stanisław Ehrlich], Warszawa: Nomos. 
• 2026 “Die assoziierende Macht der Intelligenz‘: Auf der Suche nach ‚intelligenten‘ Formen sozialer und politischer Organisation [‚The associating Power of Intelligence‘: In Search of ‚Intelligent‘ Forms of Social and Political Organisation]“, in NTM Journal of the History of Science, Technology and Medicine 34 (3). Link
• 2026 “Sovietization”, in: Katrin Steffen, Maciej Górny, Bartosz Dziewanowski-Stefańczyk (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of the History of Poland, London/New York: Routledge, 336–345. Link 
• 2024 “The Masters and Victims of Partisanship: Arnošt Kolman and Adam Schaff on the crossroads of partisan science”, Science in Context  37(1), 39 – 61. Link
• 2023 Review: Blut und Metall. Die transnationalen Wissensräume von Ludwik Hirszfeld und Jan Czochralski im 20. Jahrhundert Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2021, in: NTM Zeitschrift für Geschichte der Wissenschaften, Technik und Medizin. Link
• 2022  ‘Periodisations’ in Intellectual History: On the Plurality of Continuities in the post-war Public Debates of Poland, in: Jade McGlynn, Lucian George (Eds.): Rethinking Period Boundaries: New Approaches to Continuity and Discontinuity in Modern European History and Culture, Oldenbourg: De Gruyter, 2022, pp. 149 – 174. Link
• 2021 Review: Izabela Wagner, Bauman: A Biography, Cambridge: Polity Press 2020, in: Acta Poloniae Historica, Vol. 123, pp. 353 – 362. Link
• 2021 The Academic Virtues in Public Discussion: Adam Schaff and the Campaign against the Lvov-Warsaw School in Post-War Poland, in: Studia Historiae Scientiarum, Vol. 20, pp. 711–753. Link
• 2020 Auf dem Weg zur „Einheit“: Józef Chałasiński und die Suche nach einer „erlaubten“ Genealogie der Soziologie im Nachkriegspolen (1945–1951), in: NTM Zeitschrift für Geschichte der Wissenschaften, Technik und Medizin, Vol. 28 (4), pp. 519–546. Link
• 2019 The „Scientific View“ of the Intelligentsia: The Literary Roots of Scholarly Public Debates in Post-War Poland (1946–1948), in: HISTORYKA. Studia Metodologiczne Vol. 49, pp. 77–100 Link
• 2019 Review: Science Overcoming Borders, hrsg. von Věra Dvořáčková, Martin Franc. Masarykův ústav a Archiv AV ČR: Praha, 2018., in: Acta Poloniae Historica, Vol. 119, S. 350–357. Link
• 2019 Theory in Action: French Personalism in the Public Debates of Post-war Poland, in: Reliģiski-filozofiski raksti XXV, pp. 277–293. Link

• 2019 Conceptualising „Anti-Zionism“: Piasecki’s Group as an Intellectual Resource for the 1968 Antisemitic Campaign in People’s Poland, in: Europa Orientalis. Studi e ricerche sui paesi dell'Est europeo, 38 (2019), pp. 103–118. Link

   

• 09/2026 (planned) “Growing Intelligence: Ahmad S. Al-Khalidi and applying ‘Western’ psychological theories in Mandatory Palestine”, Conference paper; Annual Convention of the German Society for the History of Science, Technics, and Medicine (GWMT), Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague
• 12/2025 “(De-)Racializing Intelligence in ‘Zionist science’: A search for historical agency beyond the domains of ‘race’”, Conference paper; Conference Scientific Anti-Racism in the 20th Century, Centre de recherche, médecine, sciences, santé, santé mentale, société, EHESS - Université Paris Cité
• 12/2025 “Między ekspansją i „wspaniałą izolacją”: Historia nauki wśród nauk historycznych [Between Expansion and ‘Splendid Isolation’: The History of Science Among the Historical Sciences] Między ekspansją i „wspaniałą izolacją”: Historia nauki wśród nauk historycznych]”, Conference paper; Conference The History of Science Among the Historical Sciences [Historia nauki wśród nauk historycznych], The Institute for the History of Science, Polish Academy of Sciences (Poland)
• 07/2025 “Why ‘Jewish Intelligence’? The Political Imaginary behind the New-Old Debate” Conference paper; Conference Truth Politics between Science and Society. Political Epistemologies of the 1990s Science Wars, Erfurt (Germany)