Agnieszka Sobocinska

Agnieszka Sobocinska's picture
Visiting Fellow

Dr. Agnieszka Sobocinska is a Senior Research Fellow in the School of Philosophical, Historical and International Studies at Monash University, Australia. She is a historian with an interest in the intersection between public opinion and international affairs, with a particular focus on the North-South divide in the mid-twentieth century. Her first monograph, Visiting the Neighbours: Australians in Asia (NewSouth, 2014) situated travel as a politically significant element in the history of Australian-Asian relations. Her forthcoming book, Saving the World? Western volunteers and the rise of the humanitarian-development complex is under contract with Cambridge University Press. This book places volunteers at the center of a nexus of governments, NGOs, private corporations, and public opinion that encouraged continuous and accelerating intervention in the Global South from the 1950s. It also traces official and grassroots responses to the arrival and continued presence of Western volunteers across Asia and Africa through the 1970s and beyond.

MacMillan Center
Acad Year (Current): 
2019-20
Program: 
MacMillan Center