GARD is a research group within New Europe College which was launched in 2019 at the initiative of our late and much-lamented friend and colleague, Viorel Anăstăsoaie, PhD. It focuses on contemporary anthropological research and theories, in taking into consideration their larger 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 at offering a space for exchanges, debates, projects of anthropological relevance for all scholars interested in anthropological research on/in Romania and beyond. Benefiting from the multidisciplinary and international profile of NEC, inter-disciplinary exchange between anthropologists and other social scientists is strongly encouraged and anticipated.

The group has been meeting regularly in 2019 and in 2020, until the onset of the covid pandemic. We are reviving it now, and our intention is to organize monthly meetings, which will continue to adopt, as they did while being coordinated by Viorel Anastăsoaie, a variety of formats including public talks, discussion of pre-circulated papers, film screenings, debates, and roundtable exchanges on newly published relevant books. The group’s range of topics and themes of interest is programmatically left as open as possible. Further thematic and topical threads of discussion and research are expected to emerge through conversations between the participants.

Events:

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