The presentation will offer an overview of the project Brokers-of-NAM, which draws on biographical approaches to understand the practices of internationalism and political networking in the making of the Non-Aligned Movement. The project focuses on the lives of five actors that played an important role in weaving the networks of nonalignment during the years of the Cold War in different regions of the world. These are Veljko Vlahović, Vassos Lyssaridis, Kamal Jumblatt, Oscar Waiss, and U Kyaw Nyein. I will particularly discuss the life of Vlahovic, a leading figure of the Yugoslav communist regime who had an instrumental role in promoting non-alignment and articulating the transnational networks of the Yugoslav communist regime. 

The talk will position the project in the context of existent scholarship on non-alignment. More importantly, it will offer examples from the writings and archives of Vlahovic. This case showcases the importance of a biographical approach to rethink the temporalities of non-alignment, the multi-layered and multi-sited nature of its meanings, and the making of the political networks that underpinned its expansion into the global South.

Agustín Cosovschi is a historian and a research associate at the Institute of contemporary history in Ljubljana (INZ). His research deals with the contemporary history of Southeast Europe from a global perspective. He completed his PhD at the EHESS in France and the University of San Martín in Argentina. His work combines approaches in political and intellectual history together with the use of digital methods. Since November 2025, he is PI of the project “Brokers of Non-Alignment: Biographical and Network Approaches to the Making of the Third World” funded by an ERC Starting Grant.

This event takes place in the context of the research project “Foreign policy thinking in communist Albania and Romania”, funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF).