Dora Vargha

Dora Vargha is a Professor of History and Medical Humanities at the University of Exeter and Humboldt Universität zu Berlin. She specializes in global health history, focusing on biomedical research and disease during the Cold War era, particularly in Eastern Europe. As a former visiting fellow (2021–2024) in the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science's Practices of Validation in the Biomedical Sciences group, she has led major research projects including the Wellcome Collaborative Award Connecting Three Worlds and the ERC Starting Grant Socialist Medicine: An Alternative Global Health History.

• Research Focus: Global health politics, Cold War science, transnational medical cooperation
• Leadership: Co-editor, Cambridge History of Medicine; Co-editor, Epidemic Histories (Johns Hopkins Press)

Her work analyzes how Cold War divisions shaped—and were transcended by—responses to epidemics like polio. She challenges traditional East/West and North/South frameworks in global health history through archival research, oral histories, and international collaborations.

Scientific Awards:

• ICOHTEC Young Scholar Book Prize 2014

Grants & Projects:

• Wellcome Discovery Award: After the End (interdisciplinary analysis of disease endings in biomedical research)
• ERC Starting Grant: Socialist Medicine (rethinking global health politics beyond geopolitical binaries)
• Wellcome Collaborative Award: Connecting Three Worlds (exploring socialist networks in global health history)