Team

Caterina Preda, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Bucharest (Project Director)

Caterina Preda holds a PhD in Political Science of the University of Bucharest (2008) and has had several undergraduate and post-graduate scholarships in Europe and South America, as well as postdoctoral fellowships. Assistant Professor at the University of Bucharest, Department of Political Science, she teaches ‘Contemporary Latin America’, ‘Art and Politics’, and ‘Cultural memory in Eastern Europe and South America’ courses. She researches the relationship between art and politics in modern dictatorships in South America and Eastern Europe, as well as the art of memorialization in the two regions. She has published several scientific articles in international peer-reviewed journals, as well as chapters in volumes published by Routledge or Palgrave. She has coordinated several research projects at the University of Bucharest and has worked as part of other research teams.

Maria Alina Asavei, PhD, Senior Lecturer

Maria-Alina Asavei is a Senior Lecturer in Russian and East European Department (Institute of International Studies, Charles University in Prague) and independent curator of contemporary art. Asavei is currently the recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship at the Fordham University (New York City) and Senior Researcher within Charles University’ research project “Beyond Hegemonic Narratives and Myths: History and Memory of the Troubled Pasts in Central and South East-Europe.” Her research interests revolve around critical theory, gender studies, cultural studies, aesthetics, religious studies, ethnography, memory studies and forms of artistic engagement during and after totalitarian regimes. She has published articles and book chapters with prestigious journals and publishing houses, such as: Sternberg Press, Oxford University Press, Memory Studies, Journal of Aesthetics and Culture. Her recent book Aesthetics, Disinterestedness and Effectiveness in Political Art (Lexington Books, Rowman & Littlefield) deals with the concatenation of art, politics& aesthetics from a philosophical perspective.

Dan Drăghia, PhD, Postdoctoral Researcher, Associate Lecturer at the Faculty of Political Science, University of Bucharest

Dan Draghia holds a Ph.D. from the Faculty of Political Science – University of Bucharest. He worked as a researcher at the Institute for the Investigation of the Communist Crimes and the Memory of the Romanian Exile (IICCMER) and now works as an associate lecturer at the Faculty of Political Science. His research topic as part of the project is entitled: ”A difficult reconciliation. Monuments for the memory of communism in Eastern Europe”.

Codruța Pohrib, PhD candidate (2018-2019)

Codruta Pohrib is a PhD candidate at Maastricht University, carrying research into the generational remembrance of communism across media in post-communist Romania. She is also a lecturer in the Comparative Literature Department at Utrecht University, where she teaches bachelor and master courses on cultural memory and human rights and literature. She has published on material culture and remembrance, digital practices of remembrance, educational media of memory in journals such as Memory Studies, European Journal of Cultural Studies, Journal of Educational Media, Memory and Society, and in edited volumes (Routledge).

Alexandra Oprea, PhD candidate

Alexandra Oprea is a PhD candidate at the University of Bucharest, Department of Political Science and at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS, Paris). Her research focuses on inquiring the anticorruption movements in post-communist Romania, using a socio-historical approach. She is currently the recipient of a French Government scholarship at the EHESS, Paris, where she is a member of the research center Laboratoire interdisciplinaire d’études sur les réflexivités – Fonds Yan Thomas (LIER-FYT. She is also a teaching assistant at the Political Science Department at the University of Bucharest, where she is responsible for the introductory undergraduate seminars on European studies and Political theory.