GARD is a research group within the New Europe College, launched in 2019 at the initiative of our late and much-lamented friend and colleague, Viorel Anăstăsoaie, PhD. GARD focuses on contemporary anthropological research and theories, taking into account their broader relevance within the humanities and social sciences. Building on the continuous support for anthropology during NEC’s existence through fellowships, workshops and conferences, this research group aims to provide a space for exchanges, debates, and projects of anthropological relevance for all scholars interested in anthropological research on/in Romania and beyond. Taking advantage of the multidisciplinary and international profile of NEC, inter-disciplinary exchanges between anthropologists and other social scientists are strongly encouraged and anticipated.

The group met regularly in 2019 and in 2020, until the outbreak of the Covid pandemic. Since 2022, we have resumed the group’s activity, by organizing monthly meetings, which continued to adopt, as they did while being coordinated by Viorel Anastăsoaie, a variety of formats including public talks, discussions of pre-circulated papers, film screenings, debates, and roundtable exchanges on newly published relevant books. The group’s range of topics and interests is programmatically left as open as possible. It is expected that further thematic and topical threads of discussion and research will emerge through conversations between the participants.

The group fosters the broad dissemination of anthropological debates and research results through the publication of articles derived from anthropological studies carried out in Romania and/or issues relevant to the Romanian context in internationally recognized journals. In order to expand and encourage the production of new results in the field of anthropological knowledge, GARD members seek to initiate and develop compelling research projects and to submit research proposals for competitive national and international funding. Particular attention will be given to calls by EU’s research agencies.

GARD is currently supported by a grant of the Ministry of Research, Innovation and Digitization, CNCS/CCCDI – UEFISCDI, project number PN-IV-P8-8.1-PRE-HE-ORG-2023-0055, within PNCDI IV.

Events:

2024

– Turning Rites into Rights: the Remaking of Global Orthodoxy through Law and Politics
Vlad NAUMESCU, Associate Professor, Central European University
23 April 2024, at New Europe College

– Launching event of MARTOR Journal, volume 28/2023, “Witchcraft, Magic, Divination and the 21st Century”
8 February 2024, at New Europe College

– Three Faces of Communism: on the Relation Between People and Things in a Contemporary Romanian Institution
Gabriela NICOLESCU, NEC Alumna (2009-2010 GE-NEC Fellow); Anthropologist, curator and writer
18 January 2024, at New Europe College

2023

– The Value of Plastics: A View from Romania
Magdalena CRĂCIUN, NEC Alumna; Lecturer, Faculty of Sociology and Social Work, University of Bucharest
7 December 2023, at New Europe College

– Сarriers of Emptiness: Ukrainian Forced Migrants in Romania
Volodymyr ARTIUKH, NEC Alumnus; Postdoctoral Researcher within the ERC-funded project EMPTINESS: Living Capitalism and Democracy after (Post)Socialism, Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (University of Oxford)
16 November 2023, at New Europe College

– “Esto”: The Shape of Revolution in Cuba
Martin HOLBRAAD, Professor of Social Anthropology, University College London
27 October 2023, at New Europe College

2022

– Theopolitical Imagination, Ritual and Politics in Romanian Orthodox Christianity
Simion POP, PhD Candidate (ABD) in Sociology and Social Anthropology, Central European University (Budapest/Vienna)
1 July 2022, via Zoom

– Workers’ Skin: Filth and Abject Labor in a Romanian Rail Yard
Adrian DEOANCA, Researcher, “Francisc I. Rainer” Institute of Anthropology of the Romanian Academy
27 May 2022, via Zoom

– ‘Wine is our Bread’: Labour and Value in Moldovan Winemaking
Daniela ANA, PhD, Consultant on labour rights issues in Sachsen-Anhalt, Germany
29 April 2022, via Zoom

– Stealing to Belong: An Ethnography of Outsmarting in a Southern Romanian Mahala
Ana CHIRIȚOIU, PhD, Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology, Central European University, Vienna; Editor, Anthropology Matters Journal
24 March 2022, via Zoom

2020

– Historical Anthropology of Industrial Socialism in Romania’
A Seminar on two recently published books: Alina-Sandra CUCU, Planning Labour: Time and the Foundations of Industrial Socialism in Romania (Berghahn Books, 2019) and Adrian GRAMA, Laboring Along: Industrial Workers and the Making of Postwar Romania (De Gruyter 2019)
with Alina CUCU, NEC alumna (2018/2019 NEC Odobleja Fellow), Adrian GRAMA, Ştefan Odobleja Fellow, Postdoctoral Fellow, Graduate School for East and Southeast European Studies, Regensburg and Stefan GUGA, consultant for Syndex Romania in Bucharest.
9 March 2020, at New Europe College

– That’s enough about the Other: founding figures in the history of anthropology
Anna GRIMSHAW, PhD, Department of Anthropology, Emory University, Atlanta (via Skype)
Patrick LAVIOLETTE, PhD, UEFISCDI Award Fellow, Visiting scholar, University College, London
Discussant: Jonathan LARCHER, PhD, UEFISCDI Award Fellow, Centre de Recherches en Arts et Langage (EHESS), Lecturer, Nanterre University, Paris
24 February 2020, at New Europe College

– “The grass is ripe when little bells sound in the grass.” Interdisciplinarity research of the cultural landscape
Anamaria IUGA, PhD, Ştefan Odobleja Fellow, Researcher, National Museum of the Romanian Peasant
Cosmin Marius IVAȘCU, PhD, biologist, Aquatim
10 February 2020, at New Europe College

– Making and unmaking neamuri. The fairness of kinship in a Romanian village
Radu UMBREȘ, PhD, Assistant Professor, National School of Political and Administrative Studies, Bucharest
27 January 2020, at New Europe College

– Viktor Shklovsky, Bronislaw Malinowski, and the Invention of a Narrative Device: Implications for a History of Ethnographic Theory
Giuseppe TATEO, PhD, NEC UEFISCDI Award Fellow
13 January 2020, at New Europe College

2019

– Desire for a Stranger Master: Foreign Privatisations and National Humiliation in the Balkans
Ivan RAJKOVIĆ, PhD, Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Vienna
16 December 2019, at New Europe College

– Themes, Theories and Temporalities in the Anthropological Work of Mihály Sárkány
Speakers: Viorel ANĂSTĂSOAIE, László FOSZTÓ, Călin GOINA, Csilla KÖNCZEI, Mihály SÁRKÁNY
12 December 2019, at New Europe College

– Trends of Anthropological Research in the 21st Century
Mihály SÁRKÁNY, PhD, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Research Centre for the Humanities, Institute of Ethnology
11 December 2019, at New Europe College

– The Moral Economy of Trade and the Work of Hope in a Neighborhood of Bucharest
Gergő PULAY, PhD, Postdoctoral Fellow, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle/Saale
27 November 2019, at New Europe College

– Enhancing the Inner Self: An Anthropology of Entrepreneurial Middle Class Subjectivities in Contemporary Romania
Sorin GOG, PhD, Lecturer, Department of Sociology, Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca
13 November 2019, at New Europe College

– Film screening:
The Chalice. Of Sons and Daughters (Work-in-progress, 80’) Director: Cătălina TESĂR
Followed by a Q&A session with Cătălina TESĂR, NEC Odobleja Fellow, Researcher, National Museum of the Romanian Peasant
Discussant: Jonathan LARCHER, UEFISCDI Award Fellow, Centre de Recherches en Arts et Langage (EHESS), Lecturer, Nanterre University, Paris
9 October 2019, at New Europe College