The virtual seminar will be held from 12:30 to 2:00 p.m. (E.T.)
The International Atomic Energy Agency was founded in 1957 and given the mandate to promote the peaceful uses of nuclear technology for development without furthering its military uses. Over the course of its history, the agency developed from a small technical bureaucracy to a key organization in the global nuclear nonproliferation regime. How did the newly established agency confront the catch-22 challenges of sharing nuclear knowledge and technology while seeking to deter nuclear weapon programs? This presentation will explore the IAEA’s beginnings and the first attempts to establish a safeguards system to ensure that nuclear materials and technologies were not diverted to military programs. It is based on the recent book "Inspectors for Peace: A History of the International Atomic Energy Agency".
About the speaker: Elisabeth Roehrlich is an Associate Professor in History at the University of Vienna, Austria. She has held research fellowships in Washington DC at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the German Historical Institute, as well as the Norwegian Institute for Defense Studies in Oslo. She is the author of "Inspectors for Peace: A History of the International Atomic Energy Agency" (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2022).