Mathias Fuelling, István Deák Lecturer in the Discipline of History, is an historian of economic planning, socialism, and the nation-state in modern Europe. He received his Ph.D. in History from Temple University in the autumn of 2025. His dissertation, The Forgotten Plan: The Czechoslovak Two Year Plan in a European Context, 1939-1989, studied the history of economic planning in Czechoslovakia, primarily the Two Year Plan of 1946-1948, connecting it with the legacy of the Nazi occupation of Bohemia and Moravia, and tracing its influence on domestic Czechoslovak politics across the Cold War. He is currently working on turning his dissertation into a book. He is also in the early stages of a second book project, which will study the intertwined legacies of Communist conceptions and policies regarding the nation-state, and of far-right and fascist proposals for European unification, on post-Cold War European politics.

This interview was conducted over Zoom in July. The transcript that follows was edited and condensed for clarity.

Harriman: Can you talk about your background and how your upbringing shaped the trajectory of your career?

Mathias: I was born and raised in the American West. I grew up in a kind of government agency family in the rural American West and we moved around a bit. My dad worked for the Forest Service. I went to Utah State University, where my dad also went, and studied philosophy as an undergraduate. I thought about going to graduate school for it, but realized I was less interested in the ideas themselves than in the people and the historical context in which those ideas were formed.

I went to Utah State for my master’s, and a faculty member mentioned there was an archive of material from Czechoslovakia in the basement of the library. I looked into it, and that set me on the path I’m on now.

The archive was a very unusual collection. It came from two brothers who had served Mormon missions in Czechoslovakia in the 1930s. I began using that archive for my master’s thesis and became fascinated with Czechoslovakia. My thesis focused on the formation of Czech and German ethnic nationalism in the Habsburg Empire and how that influenced events through World War II. When I started my dissertation, I became more interested in the role of the state, government, policy, and bureaucracy, which led me to study economic planning in Czechoslovakia.

Harriman: What are you working on now?

Mathias: I’m putting together my book proposal based on my dissertation about economic planning in Czechoslovakia, primarily in the 1940s.

I have preliminary ideas for a second book project focused on the broader history of the development of the state and the nation in Europe, especially the influence of communist ideas about the nation-state and their legacy after the Cold War.

I’m interested in how economic planning also involves questions of who belongs within the state and the nation. Planning is ultimately about who you are planning for, and the legacy of communist-era economic planning influenced how people understood the boundaries of the nation and state.

Harriman: What courses are you planning on teaching at the Harriman?

Mathias: I’ll be teaching two seminars. The first is a graduate-level course, “Cold War Globalization: China, and Eastern Europe.” The second is for master’s students and advanced undergraduates and is called “Forced Labor in Modern Europe.”

Harriman: What do you hope students will take away from these courses?

Mathias: For “Cold War Globalization,” I want students to learn newer interpretations of the Cold War and understand it in a global way, especially through the connections between China and Eastern Europe. I want them to move beyond the traditional narrative that the Cold War — that it was only about European politics and major crises — and instead think about how communist and socialist states interacted with the wider world.

For “Forced Labor in Modern Europe,” I want students to rethink ideas about progress and understand that throughout modern European history there have been many forms of labor that were not free.

We’ll look at examples including the enslavement of Romani people in Romania, Nazi slavery, the gulag system, labor in the Eastern Bloc, and guest workers and migrant labor. The course asks questions about what labor is, what free labor means, what unfree labor means, and how labor connects to broader economic and political systems.