ABOUT
Dr. Alena Alamgir received her PhD in Sociology from Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, in 2014, and her MA in English and French Linguistics and Literature from Palacky University, Czech Republic in 1997. Her dissertation won the prestigious Theda Skocpol Dissertation Prize awarded by the Historical and Comparative Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association (ASA) in 2015, as well as Rutgers University Sociology Department’s 2014 Anne Foner Prize for the Most Outstanding Dissertation. As a postdoctoral research associate at St. Antony’s College at the University of Oxford (UK), she worked on the project Socialism Goes Global, funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council, which mapped and analyzed the relations between the countries of the former “second” and “third” worlds. She has published widely on various facets of labor migration in state socialism and the socialist roots of globalization. Dr. Alamgir is a peer reviewer for a number of journals, including the Slavic Review, Third World Quarterly, Asian and Pacific Migration Journal, Urban People/Lidé města, and Central and Eastern European Migration Review. Since 2015, she has been a member of the Program Committee, section on migration, for the convention of the Association for the Study of Nationalities (ASN), which takes place annually at the Harriman Institute at Columbia University.
At Georgia Tech, building on and combining her experiences as a linguist and as an academic writer and researcher, Dr. Alamgir teaches on the undergraduate level technical communication aspect of several courses: Introduction into MSE (1111), junior (MSE 3021) and senior (MSE 4022) lab courses, and Senior Design II (MSE 4420). She also teaches graduate-level courses on scientific writing (MSE 6754) and oral presentation skills (MSE 8200). In addition, she organizes regular workshops on prestigious fellowship and graduate school applications. With her help, MSE students have won a number of prestigious fellowships, including NSF GRFP, NDSEG, DOE NNSA Laboratory Residency Graduate Fellowship, Sloan Fellowship, and JPMorgan AI Fellowship.
PUBLICATIONS & PATENTS
ARTICLES IN PEER-REVIEWED JOURNALS & EDITED VOLUMES:
Alamgir, Alena. (forthcoming in 2023) “The Everyday Space – The Hostel, the Pub, and the Prison: Vietnamese and Cuban Workers in 1980s Czechoslovakia” in Socialist Internationalism and the Gritty Politics of the Particular: Second-Third World Spaces in the Cold War” edited by Kristin Roth-Ey (London, UK: Bloomsbury).
Alamgir, Alena. 2022. “Mobility: Education and Labour” in Socialism Goes Global: the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in the Age of Decolonization” edited by James Mark and Paul Betts (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press).
Alamgir, Alena. 2021. “‘Plně mobilní pracovní síla: Vietnamská pracovní migrace do Československa, 1967-1989,’” Paměť a Dějiny 4/2021.
Alena Alamgir & Christina Schwenkel. 2020. “From Altruistic Assistance to National Self-Interest: Vietnamese Labor Migration into CMEA Countries” in Alternative Globalizations: Eastern Europe and the Postcolonial World edited by Mark James, Steffi Marung and Artemy Kalinovsky (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press).
Alamgir, Alena. 2020. “‘Inappropriate Behavior’: Labor Control and the Polish, Cuban and Vietnamese Workers in Czechoslovakia” in State Socialist Europe after 1945: Contributions to Global Labor History edited by Marsha Seifert and Susan Zimmermann (Budapest: Central European University Press).
Alamgir, Alena. 2018. “Labor and Labor Migration in State Socialism” introduction to a special issue, Labor History, volume 59, issue 3 (July).
Alamgir, Alena. 2017. “From the Field to the Factory Floor: Vietnamese Government’s Defense of Migrant Workers’ Interests in State-Socialist Czechoslovakia,” Journal of Vietnamese Studies 12(1):10-41.
Alamgir, Alena. 2014. "Recalcitrant Women: Internationalism and the Redefinition of Welfare Limits in the Czechoslovak-Vietnamese Labor Exchange Program, 1967-1989," Slavic Review 73 (1):133–155.
Alamgir, Alena. 2013. “Race Is Elsewhere: State-socialist ideology and the racialisation of Vietnamese workers in Czechoslovakia,” Race & Class 54 (4):67–85.
Alamgir, Alena. 2006. “The Learned Brāhmen, Who Assists Me”: Changing Colonial Relationships in the 18th and 19th Century India,” Journal of Historical Sociology 19 (4):419–446.
BOOK REVIEWS
Review of Szymańska-Matsiewicz, Grażyna. Vietnamese in Poland: From Socialist Fraternity to the Global Capitalism Era. Berlin: Peter Lang, 2019. Published in: Journal of Vietnamese Studies 16, 4 (2021): 103-105.
Review of Shevel, Oxana. Migration, Refugee Policy, and State Building in Postcommunist Europe. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Published in: Russian Review 72, 1 (January 2013): 180–181.
Review of Walke, Anika, Jan Musekamp, and Nicole Svobodny, eds. Migration and Mobility in the Modern Age: Refugees, Travelers, and Traffickers in Europe and Eurasia. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2017. Published in: Russian Review 77, 1 (January 2018): 170-171.
EDUCATION & AWARDS
Ph.D., Sociology, Rutgers University, The State University of New Jersey (May 2014).
Dissertation: Socialist Internationalism at Work: Changes in the Czechoslovak-Vietnamese Labor Exchange Program, 1967-1989.
- Winner of the American Sociological Association’s (Comparative and Historical Sociology Section) Theda Skocpol Dissertation Award (2015) for the best dissertation.
- Winner of the Anne Foner Dissertation Prize for the Most Outstanding Dissertation, Sociology Department, Rutgers University (2014).
Advisor and Doctoral Committee Chair: József Böröcz.
Members: Ann Mische, Catherine Lee, Dominique Arel (external evaluator).
M.A. with distinction, English and French Linguistics and Literature, Palacký University, Czech Republic (June 1997) - including one-year (1995-96) study abroad, at Coe College, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, supported by a fellowship.
- ASA, Section on Comparative and Historical Sociology Theda Skocpol Dissertation Award, June 2015.
- Anne Foner Dissertation Prize for the Most Outstanding Dissertation, Department of Sociology, Rutgers University, June 2014.
- Fellow, Third International Summer School in Social Sciences in Ukraine “Soviet legacies and post-Soviet practices: economy, politics, everyday life,” Ostroh (Ukraine), sponsored by the Embassy of France in Ukraine, École des hautes études en sciences sociales [EHESS] (France), Doctoral School of National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy (Ukraine), Centre franco-russe de recherche en sciences humaines et sociales de Moscou (Russia), 2011.
- Fellow, Texts/Images of History: Representations and Uses of the Past in Central and Southeast Europe, Istanbul Turkey, workshop sponsored by Sabanci University, Istanbul, Turkey and Central European University, Budapest, 2001.
- Fellow, The Cultures of Democracy and Democratization: Israel, Eastern Europe and Beyond, Rutgers University, NJ; yearlong seminar sponsored by the Center for Russian, Central and East European Studies and the Allen and Joan Bildner Center for the Study of Jewish Life, 1999-2000.
- Rutgers Excellence Fellowship, 1997–2000.
- One-year study abroad fellowship, Coe College, Cedar Rapids, IA. 1995–1996. Dean’s List, Coe College, Cedar Rapids, IA Fall 1995, Spring 1996.
RESEARCH INTERESTS
Immigration, labor migration, race and ethnic relations, gender, economic and political sociology of globalization and transnationalism, state socialism, labor relations, social change, East-Central Europe, Vietnam.