Waqar is Associate Professor of History at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS). His research focuses on the relationship(s) between technology and international relations in the twentieth century. Current research interests include scientific and technological internationalism, aviation, atomic energy, arms control, and A.I. At the ideational level his work explores the way science and technology have been imagined as key constituents of international affairs, warfare, and international organisations by internationalists and their opponents, and the role science and technology has played in internationalist ideologies and discourses through the century.
Waqar has published in a range of research journals, including Past and Present, The Journal of Contemporary History, and the International History Review. He has a book forthcoming with Cambridge University Press in 2020, titled Technological Internationalism and World Order: Aviation and Atomic Energy, 1920-50.
Waqar has an MSc and PhD in the History of Science, Technology and Medicine from Imperial College London, and a BA in Physics from the University of Oxford. He is a Research Affiliate at the Governance of A.I. Program at the Future of Humanities Institute at the University of Oxford, and a Research Collaborator at the Research Institute for the History of Global Arms Transfer, Meiji University. He is also a member of the DHST Historical Commission on Science, Technology and Diplomacy and an Associate Editor of Palgrave Communications.
Keywords: science and technology; experts and expertise; international relations and diplomacy;
United Nations; League of Nations