New Europe College

Congrats to the authors!

Yiddish Culture in Greater Romania (1918-1940) Yiddish culture was an important part of the cultural landscape of Eastern Europe from the Baltic Sea to the Danube, connecting the scattered Ashkenazi Jewry, the overwhelming majority of the Jews living in this geographical area. In the newly created Greater Romania, the Jewish component included m...

The weekly NEC seminar: "Should Philosophy Have a Non-Western Canon?", presentation by Daria DROZDOVA

In the present project I’m going to study and compare current discussion of the canon in humanities and social sciences (mainly in Literary Studies, Sociology, Archival Studies, History and Philosophy of Science) in order to indicate theoretical concepts and practices which can be effectivly transferred to history of philosophy and employed for extension and elaboration of the philosophical canon.

The weekly NEC seminar: "World Bank Comes to Ukraine: Improving Higher Education for Results", presentation by Ararat OSIPIAN, SUS-VUIAS Fellow

World Bank “Ukraine Improving Higher Education for Results Project” aims to improve efficiency, conditions for quality, and transparency. International help is needed to form autonomous world class universities in Ukraine, but the World Bank faces the challenge of corruption and war emergency. This will be a lengthy process that would involve reconstruction, reform and development. The World Bank should take a leading role in Ukraine’s educational sector recovery, restoration, and rebuilding.

Tuesday, 11.00: ‘New Europeans’ in the Carpathians, 1870s to 1920s
A talk given (online) by James KORANYI, Associate Professor in Modern Cultural European History, Durham University
Follow the link for details
https://nec.ro/events/new-europeans-in-the-carpathians-1870s-to-1920s/

This event is organized within the research group Environmental Humanities 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 and hosted by New Europe College.

The weekly NEC seminar: "Russian Empire-Building and Local Agency in Ukrainian Lands: A Case Study on Shaping the First ‘Novorossiya’ Governorate in the 1760s", presentation by Nataliya SUREVA, GCE St. Gallen Fellow

"In the latter half of the 18th century, Southern Ukraine underwent profound transformations, with the Russian Empire imposing new administrative, fiscal, and social structures. This research project delves into the experiences and perspectives of the indigenous communities of Southern Ukraine during this period, challenging the dominant Russian imperial narrative that portrayed these lands as a “wild field” awaiting cultivation. Relying on primary sources, the project aims to foreground the voices of these communities as they navigated the challenges brought by the empire. Notably, it argues against a binary understanding of oppressor and oppressed, emphasizing instead the complex dynamics of power, negotiation, and adaptation."

NEC hosted today the workshop "The Age of Algorithms"
Conveners: Cristian DUCU, Andreea EȘANU, Răzvan NICOLESCU, Andrei SIPOȘ
Welcome remarks: Valentina SANDU-DEDIU
Participants: Keynote Speaker Tom STERKENBURG; Alexandru BĂLĂȘESCU, Roxana BRATU, Richard DAVID-RUS, Alexandru DRAGOMIR, Cristian DUCU, Andreea EȘANU, Răzvan NICOLESCU, Elena POPA

The aim of this multidisciplinary workshop was to address and explore various dimensions of what we may now call “the age of algorithms”. From large language models already proven to be able to complete tasks of human-level complexity, to smart devices capable to make expert decisions in specialized fields like medicine or healthcare, and social media algorithms that filter every bit of information and shape our preferences online, algorithms have become an indispensable part of our world – with the good, but also with the bad, the risks, the uncertainty.

The Age of Algorithms Workshop is an event focused on inter-disciplinary aspects of artificial intelligence, organized jointly by the New Europe College, Bucharest and the Institute for Logic and Data Science, with the generous support of BRD – Groupe Société Générale.
This workshop is 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.

The weekly NEC seminar: '“I’m not a Conspiracist, but…” Conspiracies, Disinformation, Fake News and Loneliness in Bucharest', presentation by Răzvan NICOLESCU, AMEROPA Fellow

The project explores ethnographically the relation between social trust and the Fake News phenomena in Bucharest, Romania. The research focuses on the way levels of trust are affected by social relations and by the consumption of media that have been identified as the main promoters of Fake News: (1) social media, especially WhatsApp, Facebook and TikTok platforms, (2) online media outlets, including blogs, vlogs, and news sites; and (3) niche television channels with rather alarmist viewpoints.

On 20 June 2024, NEC will host the workshop "The Age of Algorithms".
The aim of this multidisciplinary workshop is to address and explore various dimensions of what we may now call “the age of algorithms”. From large language models already proven to be able to complete tasks of human-level complexity, to smart devices capable to make expert decisions in specialized fields like medicine or healthcare, and social media algorithms that filter every bit of information and shape our preferences online, algorithms have become an indispensable part of our world – with the good, but also with the bad, the risks, the uncertainty.
Participants: Keynote Speaker - Tom STERKENBURG
Alexandru BĂLĂȘESCU, Roxana BRATU, Richard DAVID-RUS, Alexandru DRAGOMIR, Cristian DUCU, Andreea EȘANU, Răzvan NICOLESCU, Elena POPA
The Age of Algorithms Workshop is an event focused on inter-disciplinary aspects of artificial intelligence, organized jointly by the New Europe College, Bucharest and the Institute for Logic and Data Science, with the generous support of BRD – Groupe Société Générale.
This workshop is 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.
https://nec.ro/events/the-age-of-algorithms/

Day 2 of the conference "Conceptualizing Corruption: The “Old Regime” and the New Order in East-Central-South Europe (1750s-1850s)"
This conference is organized within the framework of the research program Transnational histories of ‘corruption’ in Central-South-East Europe (1750-1850), funded by the European Union (ERC, TransCorr, ERC-2022-ADG no. 101098095) and hosted by the New Europe College.

Photos from day 1 of the conference "Conceptualizing Corruption: The “Old Regime” and the New Order in East-Central-South Europe (1750s-1850s)"

This conference is organized within the framework of the research program Transnational histories of ‘corruption’ in Central-South-East Europe (1750-1850), funded by the European Union (ERC, TransCorr, ERC-2022-ADG no. 101098095) and hosted by the New Europe College.

Monday and Tuesday at NEC and online.

Conceptualizing Corruption: The “Old Regime” and the New Order in East-Central-South Europe (1750s-1850s) : NEC NEC Institute for Advanced Study

Yesterday evening at NEC: "Ethno-erotic Economies: Sexuality, Money, and Belonging, in Comparative Perspective", a talk given by George Paul MEIU, Professor of Anthropology and Chair of the Institute of Social Anthropology, University of Basel

Short abstract: What happens when a people that have long been venerated and vilified for the difference of their culture and sexual customs use that very same difference to produce livelihoods and craft futures? Since the 1980s, young men of the Samburu ethnic group in northern Kenya have migrated seasonally to beach resorts at the Indian Ocean to sell souvenirs and perform traditional dances for tourists. They have capitalized on an older, colonial image of the “tribal warrior” or moran—a prototypical young man whose tall, slim body adorned in traditional clothes congeals a heroic masculinity and an exotic sexuality. This image became a bestselling brand of East Africa as a tourist destination. Numerous white women from Western Europe on vacation in Kenya engage in intimate relationships with these men. Through such intimacies, Samburu men have found a new path to rapid wealth. They have thus devised a way to circumvent the Kenyan state—a state that has long marginalized them—and access money through relationships with foreigners. Ironically, for these men, economic and political empowerment has required commodifying a colonial image of ethnic sexuality long used to legitimize their marginalization. The stereotype-cum-market “fiction” of an inherently different Samburu moran sexuality generated a large economy. The effects of these economy reach beyond tourist resorts, as money, goods, and persons circulate widely and encompass, in ever-broader concentric circles, coastal migrant communities and northern towns and villages. They involve complex exchanges and negotiations that play out in renegotiations of age, generation, gender, kinship, wealth, and wellbeing.

This paper asks: How does the commodification of ethnic sexuality in tourism shape how ethnic subjects imagine and claim belonging? And how do their desires to belong inform how they market their ethnic sexuality? Revisiting Ethno-erotic Economies (University of Chicago Press, 2017), nearly ten years after the completion of this research, this lecture brings in a twofold comparative perspective. It attends to (i) changes that emerged over the last ten years in Kenya and that have also seen Romanian tourists and travelers growingly involved in these economies; and (ii) emerging research on Romanians involved ethno-erotic economies globally.

Short bio: George Paul Meiu is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Basel. His research and teaching focus on sexuality, gender, and kinship; ethnicity, belonging and citizenship; mobility, memory, and materiality; and the political economy of East Africa and Eastern Europe. He is author of Ethno-erotic Economies: Sexuality, Money, and Belonging in Kenya (University of Chicago Press, 2017) and Q***r Objects to the Rescue: Intimacy and Citizenship in Kenya (University of Chicago Press, 2023) and co-editor of Ethnicity, Commodity, In/Corporation (Indiana University Press, 2020). Meiu is also producer and host of the video podcast Ethnographic Imagination Basel.

www.georgepaulmeiu.info

This event is organized within The Group for Anthropological Research and Debates (GARD) hosted by New Europe College.

On 20 June 2024, NEC will host the workshop "The Age of Algorithms".

The aim of this multidisciplinary workshop is to address and explore various dimensions of what we may now call “the age of algorithms”. From large language models already proven to be able to complete tasks of human-level complexity, to smart devices capable to make expert decisions in specialized fields like medicine or healthcare, and social media algorithms that filter every bit of information and shape our preferences online, algorithms have become an indispensable part of our world – with the good, but also with the bad, the risks, the uncertainty.

Participants: Keynote Speaker - Tom STERKENBURG
Alexandru BĂLĂȘESCU, Roxana BRATU, Richard DAVID-RUS, Alexandru DRAGOMIR, Cristian DUCU, Andreea EȘANU, Răzvan NICOLESCU, Elena POPA

The Age of Algorithms Workshop is an event focused on inter-disciplinary aspects of artificial intelligence, organized jointly by the New Europe College, Bucharest and the Institute for Logic and Data Science, with the generous support of BRD – Groupe Société Générale.
This workshop is 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.

https://nec.ro/events/the-age-of-algorithms/

On Monday and Tuesday, NEC will host the conference "Conceptualizing Corruption: The “Old Regime” and the New Order in East-Central-South Europe (1750s-1850s)"

The event is organized within the framework of the research program "Transnational histories of ‘corruption’ in Central-South-East Europe (1750-1850)", funded by the European Union (ERC, TransCorr, ERC-2022-ADG no. 101098095) and hosted by the New Europe College.

Participants: Constantin ARDELEANU, Elena DENISOVA-SCHMIDT, Augusta DIMOU, Gábor EGRY, Boğaç ERGENE, Lucien FRARY, Niels GRÜNE, Eda GÜÇLÜ, Myrto LAMPROU, Silvia MARTON, Damjan MATKOVIC, Mihai OLARU, Mária PAKUCS, Konrad PETROVSZKY, Andrei-Dan SORESCU, Simeon SYMEONOV, Alex R. TIPEI, Constanța VINTILĂ

https://nec.ro/events/conceptualizing-corruption-the-old-regime-and-the-new-order-in-east-central-south-europe-1750s-1850s/

This evening (17.00) at NEC and online: "Ethno-erotic Economies: Sexuality, Money, and Belonging, in Comparative Perspective", a presentation given by George Paul MEIU, Professor of Anthropology and Chair of the Institute of Social Anthropology, University of Basel
https://nec.ro/events/ethno-erotic-economies/

This event is organized within The Group for Anthropological Research and Debates (GARD) hosted by New Europe College.

On Tuesday, 11 June, NEC alumnus Stefan Dorondel, researcher at the Francisc Rainer Institute of Anthropology Bucharest and at the Institute for Southeast European Studies gave a talk (online) titled "The Life that Riots: Spontaneous Rewilding in Socialist Ruins".
Students from the Universities of Vienna and Jena attended the presentation that explored the spontaneous rewilding process in the socialist ruins of the islands of the Lower Danube. Stefan attempted to better theorize spontaneous rewilding as a process taking place in spaces which can be categorized as political, institutional and economic interstices.

This event was organized within the research group "Environmental Humanities" 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 and hosted by New Europe College.

https://nec.ro/events/the-life-that-riot-spontaneous-rewilding-in-socialist-ruins/

The weekly NEC seminar: "Loss of Shared Worlds: Ecocide and Russia’s War on Ukraine", presentation by Darya TSYMBALYUK, IWM for Ukrainian Scholars Fellow.

This project is focused on documenting the environmental impacts of Russia’s war on Ukraine, and consists of writing and preparing a book manuscript for publication. I have signed a book contract with Polity academic press, and while in Bucharest will focus on the writing-up phase of the project, following a 3-months fieldwork in Ukraine, funded by “Documenting Ukraine” grant by IWM (Institute of Human Sciences), Vienna.

Thursday evening at NEC.
"Ethno-erotic Economies: Sexuality, Money, and Belonging, in Comparative Perspective", a talk given by George Paul MEIU, Professor of Anthropology and Chair of the Institute of Social Anthropology, University of Basel

Short abstract: What happens when a people that have long been venerated and vilified for the difference of their culture and sexual customs use that very same difference to produce livelihoods and craft futures? Since the 1980s, young men of the Samburu ethnic group in northern Kenya have migrated seasonally to beach resorts at the Indian Ocean to sell souvenirs and perform traditional dances for tourists. They have capitalized on an older, colonial image of the “tribal warrior” or moran—a prototypical young man whose tall, slim body adorned in traditional clothes congeals a heroic masculinity and an exotic sexuality. This image became a bestselling brand of East Africa as a tourist destination. Numerous white women from Western Europe on vacation in Kenya engage in intimate relationships with these men. Through such intimacies, Samburu men have found a new path to rapid wealth. They have thus devised a way to circumvent the Kenyan state—a state that has long marginalized them—and access money through relationships with foreigners. Ironically, for these men, economic and political empowerment has required commodifying a colonial image of ethnic sexuality long used to legitimize their marginalization. The stereotype-cum-market “fiction” of an inherently different Samburu moran sexuality generated a large economy. The effects of these economy reach beyond tourist resorts, as money, goods, and persons circulate widely and encompass, in ever-broader concentric circles, coastal migrant communities and northern towns and villages. They involve complex exchanges and negotiations that play out in renegotiations of age, generation, gender, kinship, wealth, and wellbeing.

This paper asks: How does the commodification of ethnic sexuality in tourism shape how ethnic subjects imagine and claim belonging? And how do their desires to belong inform how they market their ethnic sexuality? Revisiting Ethno-erotic Economies (University of Chicago Press, 2017), nearly ten years after the completion of this research, this lecture brings in a twofold comparative perspective. It attends to (i) changes that emerged over the last ten years in Kenya and that have also seen Romanian tourists and travelers growingly involved in these economies; and (ii) emerging research on Romanians involved ethno-erotic economies globally.

Short bio:

George Paul Meiu is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Basel. His research and teaching focus on sexuality, gender, and kinship; ethnicity, belonging and citizenship; mobility, memory, and materiality; and the political economy of East Africa and Eastern Europe. He is author of Ethno-erotic Economies: Sexuality, Money, and Belonging in Kenya (University of Chicago Press, 2017) and Q***r Objects to the Rescue: Intimacy and Citizenship in Kenya (University of Chicago Press, 2023) and co-editor of Ethnicity, Commodity, In/Corporation (Indiana University Press, 2020). Meiu is also producer and host of the video podcast Ethnographic Imagination Basel.

Ethno-erotic Economies: Sexuality, Money, and Belonging, in Comparative Perspective : NEC NEC Institute for Advanced Study

Second day of the "Trust and Technology. From Social Relations to the State of Democracy" workshop organized by NEC.
https://nec.ro/events/trust-and-technology-from-social-relations-to-the-state-of-democracy/

Photos from the first day of the workshop "Trust and Technology. From Social Relations to the State of Democracy" hosted by NEC on 10 and 11 June.

The workshop is convened by NEC Fellow Razvan Nicolescu. It is organized as part of the AMEROPA fellowship program, in collaboration with Spiru Haret, N+N, DigiHum and GCE St. Gallen fellowship programs at NEC.

NEC semnalează apariția primelor volume din seria „Marin Tarangul”. Acestea sunt: „Icoana. Experiență și realitate”, „Canonul teoretic. Narațiunea teoretică”, „Filosofia picturii. Cartea privirii” și „Scrisori filosofice. Arta teoretică”.
Seria este îngrijită de alumnul NEC Ioan Alexandru Tofan și este publicată de Editura Junimea din Iași.
Volumele au la bază materiale păstrate la NEC, ca parte a Arhivei Marin Tarangul.

O discuție la finalul workshopului "Transportation Infrastructure, (Anti)Corruption, and Power Relations in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries", organizat la NEC pe 13-14 mai 2024.
Workshopul a avut loc în cadrul proiectului "Colonial Anxieties, Corruption Scandals and Xenophobia in Nineteenth-Century Infrastructure Development in Romania (CanCor)", coordonat de Silvia Marton
Detalii la https://cancor.nec.ro/

Corupție la Calea Ferată, da! Dar și o cercetare a vremurilor când ceasurile din fiecare gară erau sincronizate după ceasul șefului de tren Cea mai bună veste din lume, da, da, este cercetarea începuturilor corupției românești, cea din secolele 19-20. Căile Ferate au adus străinul și Corupția la vârf. Un nou limbaj violent. Cu Calea Ferată a venit, în Principate, un nou timp. Timpul înoirilor. De aia ceasurile din fiecare g...

Tuesday morning (11.00), an online presentation by researcher and NEC alumnus Stefan Dorondel

"The Life that Riots: Spontaneous Rewilding in Socialist Ruins" explores the spontaneous rewilding process in the socialist ruins of the islands of the Lower Danube. The paper attempts to better theorize spontaneous rewilding as a process taking place in spaces which can be categorized as political, institutional and economic interstices.

Stefan Dorondel is a Lead Researcher at the Francisc Rainer Institute of Anthropology Bucharest and at the Institute for Southeast European Studies of the Romanian Academy. Dorondel is currently guest professor at the University of Vienna. He is an anthropologist/environmental historian interested in river history, the social analysis of wetlands, soil, mud and sand and fascinated by rewilding and ecological restoration projects. His latest volume (with Stelu Serban): A New Ecological Order. Development and the Transformation of Nature in Eastern Europe (Pittsburgh University Press, 2022).

This event is organized within the research group Environmental Humanities 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 and hosted by New Europe College.

The Life that Riots: Spontaneous Rewilding in Socialist Ruins : NEC NEC Institute for Advanced Study

În această după-amiază la NEC: „Munți și păduri: progres, modernizare și natură politizată în narațiunea politică românească spre 1900”, prezentare de Raluca ALEXANDRESCU (NEC Alumna), Conferențiar dr., Facultatea de Științe Politice, Universitatea din București

Rezumat: Spre 1900, discursul românesc al modernizării abordează și reconceptualizarea raportului cu natura, trecând prin gentrificarea, teritorializarea, transformarea, comercializarea pădurilor și munților. Doctrina mediului înconjurător circulă la sfârșitul secolului al XIX-lea în toată Europa și SUA folosind o platformă comună: Școala de silvicultură de la Nancy, și o bază ideologică împărtășită, tehnocratismul saint-simonist. Comunicarea de față își propune să exemplifice aceste tendințe, urmărind de asemenea și pozițiile publice și politice pe marginea exploatării sustenabile a naturii și a raportului cu dezvoltarea. Aceste discursuri trebuie înțelese și într-o perspectivă intergenerațională a conceptelor și/sau stereotipurilor, legate adesea de discursurile naționaliste: narațiunea patriotică contemporană provine și dintr-un anumit cult naţionalist al Naturii.

*

Evenimentul a fost organizat în cadrul Grupului de reflecție asupra istoriei politice și sociale a secolelor al XVIII-lea și al XIX-lea (GRiPs) găzduit de Colegiul Noua Europă.

Next Monday afternoon and Tuesday at NEC.
„Trust and Technology. From Social Relations to the State of Democracy”

Convener: Răzvan NICOLESCU
Participants: Constantin ARDELEANU, Dmitry ASINOVSKIY, Stephanie BAKER, Roxana BRATU, Magda CRĂCIUN, Alex DINCOVICI, Cristian DUCU, Andreea EȘANU, Paolo S.H. FAVERO, Katherine FURMAN, Malte FUHRMANN, Guilherme Orlandini HEURICH, Ferdinand de JONG, Silvia MARTON, Adrian MATUS, Manuel MIREANU, Răzvan NICOLESCU, Nicoleta ROMAN, Dan Alexandru SĂVOAIA, Mircea TOBOȘARU, Claudiu TUFIȘ, Lucian VASILE, Shriram VENKATRAMAN, Mahika WASON

Trust and Technology. From Social Relations to the State of Democracy : NEC NEC Institute for Advanced Study

"Representing the Holocaust in Romania after 1945: From Yiddish Theatre to Popular Literature", presentation by Mihai LUKÁCS, Ștefan Odobleja Fellow; President, The Dialectic Center

The project comparatively analysis the Jewish art production after the Holocaust in Romania and Poland, focusing on how the traumatic historical experience was translated into a new aesthetic and a new cultural approach. The project looks at Polish literature and primary sources in Romania from 1944 to the 1960s, in a difficult political local context that affected Holocaust survivors and their common desire to create a memorial narrative of the decimation of the European Jewish community.

O nouă reuniune GRIPS - joi după-amiază (15.00)
„Munți și păduri: progres, modernizare și natură politizată în narațiunea politică românească spre 1900”, prezentare de Raluca ALEXANDRESCU (NEC Alumna), Conferențiar dr., Facultatea de Științe Politice, Universitatea din București

Munți și păduri: progres, modernizare și natură politizată în narațiunea politică românească spre 1900 : NEC NEC Institute for Advanced Study