John Marshall in Quebec: The Journey of a Rockefeller Officer

As the Rockefeller Foundation expanded its sphere of influence internationally during the 20th century, it hired a growing number of employees to carry out its work around the world. These field staff, known as “officers,” served as the Foundation’s eyes and ears, as most of them frequently traveled between countries and continents. Most of them came from academia and were on the front lines, visiting universities, research institutions, and public policy centers; meeting with researchers; engaging with intellectual circles and policymakers; identifying potential grant recipients; assisting and mentoring Foundation-funded partners; and drafting reports designed to inform decisions made at the New York headquarters.[1] Through them, the Foundation seeks to understand the societies in which it operates, as well as to identify informants who may become key contacts.

In Quebec, a predominantly French-speaking and Catholic Canadian province, this mission relies heavily on John Marshall’s work in the fields of the humanities and social sciences (figure 1). From 1933 to 1962, he served as deputy director of the Division of Humanities and later of the Division of Humanities and Social Sciences, and made numerous visits to the province between 1941 and 1954. His journey, documented through entries in his journal,[2] helps us better understand how the Rockefeller Foundation viewed Quebec’s place within North America—a topic that has received little attention in research so far.[3]

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John Marshall au Québec : itinéraire d’un officier de la Fondation Rockefeller

À mesure que la Fondation Rockefeller élargit son champ d’influence à l’international au XXe siècle, elle se dote d’un nombre croissant d’employés qui mènent son action à travers le monde. Ce personnel de terrain, dont les membres sont connus sous le nom d’officers, constituent les yeux et les oreilles de la Fondation car ils effectuent pour la plupart des navettes fréquentes entre pays et entre continents. Pour la plupart issus du monde universitaire, ils sont aux avant-postes pour visiter les universités, les lieux de recherche et les centres de politique publique, rencontrer des chercheurs, fréquenter les milieux intellectuels et les décideurs politiques, dénicher des boursiers potentiels, aider et encadrer les partenaires financés par la Fondation, et rédiger des rapports destinés à éclairer les décisions prises au quartier général new-yorkais.[1] À travers eux, la Fondation tente de comprendre les sociétés dans lesquelles elle intervient, mais aussi d’identifier des informateurs susceptibles de devenir des interlocuteurs privilégiés.

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Maria Palmira Tito de Morais: enfermagem, comunismo e as expectativas da Fundação Rockefeller

Na década de 1930, um grupo de mulheres portuguesas conhecidas como “as três Marias” — Maria Monjardino, Maria Angélica Basto e Maria Palmira Tito de Morais, sendo as duas primeiras amigas — receberam bolsas da Fundação Rockefeller para estudar na Western Reserve University (Cleveland, Estados Unidos da América).[i] O objetivo era prepará-las para construir novas e sólidas instituições de ensino de enfermagem após o seu regresso a Portugal e, de acordo com as diretrizes gerais da agência, replicar naquele país o conhecimento adquirido na América do Norte. Contudo, após o seu regresso, as três Marias seguiram um caminho bem diferente.

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Maria Palmira Tito de Morais: Nursing, Communism, and the Expectations of the Rockefeller Foundation

In the 1930s, a group of Portuguese women known as “the three Marias” — Maria Monjardino, Maria Angélica Basto and Maria Palmira Tito de Morais, the first two being friends — received Rockefeller Foundation fellowships to study at Western Reserve University (Cleveland, United States of America).[i] The aim was to prepare them to build up new and strong nursing education institutions upon their return to Portugal and, in accordance with the general guidelines of the agency, to replicate back home  the knowledge acquired in North America . However, after they returned to Portugal, the three Marias followed quite a different path.

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Romanian Rockefeller Fellows: An Interwar Story

In his April 1930 preface to the monograph Prostituția și boalele venerice în România (Prostitution and Venereal Diseases in Romania, Figure 1), Romanian doctor, eugenicist, and legislator Aurel Voina outlined the organisation of a national investigation carried out with medical professionals in 1926 to analyse the prevalence of venereal diseases in Romania. Upon returning to Romania from a 1926-1927 Rockefeller fellowship in the United States, the data from that investigation had become outdated and the 1930 publication removed most of the original data to avoid redundancy, thereby reducing its originality and making it a modest resource on prostitution and venereal diseases in Romania. Although his scope was limited to compiled materials and strategic approaches, Voina maintained an optimistic outlook that future research would address the challenges of unstandardised methodologies.1

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A Door Half Open? The Integration of Women into the “European Social Science Fellowship Program” in interwar Germany.

In the early 1920s, a new fellowship program for young researchers from different European countries was launched in the United States: the “European Social Science Fellowship Program”, administered first by the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial (LSRM) and later by the Rockefeller Foundation (RF)1. Seven of the 80 German fellows2 were women: Eva Flügge (appointed in 1925), Clara Maria Liepmann (1927), Gertrud Beushausen (1928), Elisabeth Feist (1929), Hedwig Tönniessen (1929), Ruth Flad (1933), and Magdalene Schoch (1934). This article examines the place of women in the program and the careers of these seven German fellows.

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