Ohad Reiss-Sorokin - The Rise of the New Mandarins: The Story of the “Geistkreis” from Vienna to the New World

Ohad Reiss-Sorokin’s Ph.D. dissertation “The Rise of the New Mandarins: The Story of the ‘Geistkreis’ from Vienna to the New world”, follows the story of the ‘Geistkreis,’ an interdisciplinary intellectual circle that took place in Vienna in the Interwar period.

The project aims to reconstruct the circle’s discussions, and to follow both the ideas and the members into their American exile. The project’s aim is to reveal the circle’s decisive role in the rise of the social sciences both in Vienna and in the United States. The grant will allow Reiss-Sorokin to conduct archival research in Vienna to explore the beginning of the ‘Geistkreis’ story.


Ohad Reiss-Sorokin is a doctoral candidate in the History of Science Program at Princeton University. Before coming to Princeton, Ohad graduated from the Interdisciplinary Program for Outstanding Students and earned an M.A. in philosophy at Tel-Aviv University, focusing on the production processes of philosophical knowledge.