Research Interests

His current research focuses on the relationship between technology and nationalism, particularly the ways in which discourses of science and technology are deployed in support of national and nationalist claims. In such claims, the nebulous boundaries between 'indigenous' and 'appropriated' knowledge are replaced by 'harder' boundaries that simplify very complex flows of expertise across communities, cultures, nations, and time.

He is also interested in the relationship between science & technology and 'repression.' Using the Soviet case as a starting point, he is interested in exploring the historical role of repression (coercion, arrest, incarceration, execution) in the practice of science and engineering in the twentieth century.

Dr. Siddiqi is currently finishing a book on the social, cultural, and technological roots of Soviet 'cosmonautics.' The book is entitled The Red Rockets' Glare: Soviet Imaginations and the Birth of Sputnik (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming). Based on extensive archival research in Russia, the book is the first academic work on the historical factors that led to the launch of Sputnik in 1957.

He is also the author of the two-volume Sputnik and the Soviet Space Challenge and The Soviet Space Race with Apollo both published simultaneously by the University Press of Florida in 2003. These volumes, dealing primarily with events during the Cold War, were the first histories of the Soviet space program based on Russian sources available after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Originally published as a single volume: Challenge to Apollo: The Soviet Union and the Space Race, 1945-1974 the book has received numerous national awards. In their December 30, 2006 issue, the Wall Street Journal named it one of the five best books ever published on space exploration.

Dr. Siddiqi is also serving as Series Editor of the four-volume English language memoirs of a Russian rocket engineer, Boris Chertok. These volumes are being published under the general title Rockets and People. So far, two volumes of Rockets and People.have been published, Vol. 1 (NASA History Division, 2005) and Vol. 2: Creating a Rocket Industry (NASA History Division, 2006).

He has also published widely on the history of technology and modern Russian history, including in the following journals: Technology and Culture; Osiris; History and Technology; Europe-Asia Studies; Voprosy istorii estestvoznaniia i tekhniki; Journal of the British Interplanetary Society; Spaceflight; and Quest: The History of Spaceflight Quarterly