In the past two decades, new approaches have emerged in Cold War research, which have chosen a different viewpoint on this conflict of over 40 years, whose impacts still have significant influence on the character and development of our modern world. The earlier developed international history, transnational history or global history was joined by the New Cold War History, which in its methods uses documents from former Eastern Bloc and other socialist countries.

With these documents, some aspects of the Cold War conflict are being re-assessed and re-interpreted. This makes it very different from the older approaches that portrayed the Cold War almost exclusively through the lens of the bipolar relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union, in which the other actors did not play a significant part.

The Cold War Research Group (CWRG) is based on the above-mentioned trends in current research of the Cold War and focuses on different level of relations between the socialist countries and their foreign policy in a global perspective of the Cold War. Special emphasis is placed on activities of Czechoslovakia in the “Third World” using newly declassified documents from Czech and other Eastern European archives.

CWRG was founded in 2017 as a part of the Institute for the Study of Strategic Regions – Charles University platform for excellent transdisciplinary research topics related to the global interconnectedness of the contemporary world. The CWRG is also closely interconnected with the Institute of Global History (Charles University).

It cooperates with other Czech (e.g. Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes, Institute of Contemporary History, Czech Academy of Sciences) and foreign research centers, especially with the Cold War International History Project (CWIHP) at the Wilson Center in the United States, Lund University, Cold War Research Network (organized by Utrecht University, Amsterdam University and Leiden University) and in the past also with project Socialism Goes Global (University of Exeter).

Besides the research of individual members, the aim of the CWRG is to organise seminars, workshops and conferences on the Cold War and develop international cooperation.