Katarina Mihaljevic

Rosalia (Rose) Rand (1903–1980) was an Austrian philosopher and logician of Polish-Jewish descent who was a regular and active member of the Vienna Circle between 1924 and 1938. Rand’s intellectual activity in Vienna between 1924 and 1938 comprised (1) participation in the Circle’s meetings (where she also often acted as a note-taker), (2) philosophical work on logic and the philosophy of language, and (3) work as a researcher in a psychiatric hospital at the University of Vienna. Rand’s philosophical work and her efforts to establish a philosophical career provide excellent example of the importance that external; material conditions play in determining the development of one’s philosophical contribution and subsequent (lack of) access to the philosophical canon.

In this article, I propose a novel way of understanding the mechanisms of academic transfers in the context of the Second World War by looking at the role of membership and referral systems in determining an applicant’s success. Using largely unexplored archival data from the Society for the Protection of Science and Learning, held at the Bodleian Library, and the British Federation for University Women, held at the British Library of Political and Economic Science, this articles presents the case of Rose Rand. She was a philosopher and one of the core members of the Vienna Circle who spent her professional years in exile, first in the United Kingdom and later in the United States. Her academic journey in the United Kingdom lasted almost 16 years. In that time, Rand never managed to obtain a permanent academic post despite the fact that her philosophical work is deemed relevant today by the experts and historians of her field. By reading and combining new and previously unused biographical data and personal and professional correspondence, this article shows the crucial role that memberships and personal referrals had in determining the success of her academic transfer.