Mario Bianchini

As a scholar, Mario is largely interested in German history of science and technology. More specifically, his dissertation investigates East German technological culture and the state's efforts to build a socialist technological utopia. The dissertation chapters explore how modeling hobbies, sports, science fiction, and education were designed to further the state's goals of technological utopianism. He also studies comparative post-war German economics both in his work in German Studies Review and as part of the research group "Between Bukharin and Balcerowicz: A Comparative History of Economic Thought under Communism" at the University of Vienna.

Mario earned a B.A. from NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study; a school that did not have traditional majors, rather concentrations. His concentration was on the manifestation of Nazi guilt in both Eastern and Western German literature. Also during undergrad, he studied German at Freie Universität Berlin through a German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) grant. During Graduate school, Mario received both a Fulbright Research and Study award and a Research Grant for Doctoral Candidates and Young Academics and Scientists from the DAAD to spend two years as a visiting scholar at the Center for Contemporary Historical Research in Potsdam (ZZF Potsdam) as well as a Linda Hall Library doctoral research grant. His work has appeared in German studies Review, theYearbook for Historical Communism Research (Jahrbuch für Historische Kommunismusforschung), Technologies Stories, and on H-Net.