THE RATIU FORUM HISTORY PRIZE
2022 Call for Papers
CLOSED
The submitted research papers can cover one of the following topics:
- Romania’s transition to communism – Nicolae Ceausescu’s strategies to legitimize and consolidate power
- Resistance/dissidence under Ceausescu’s regime
- The cult of personality – between the “Ceausist” and the communist regime in Romania
- The long road to the fall of communism in Romania
- Communism in the national curriculum: 1990 – present. Comparative approaches.
2022 results
We are pleased to announce that Casian Gămănuț, PhD researcher in History at the University ,,Alexandru Ioan Cuza” of Iași, Romania, is the recipient of the 2022 Ratiu Forum History Prize.
Paper title: DECEMBER ‘89, HISTORY TEXBOOKS AND COLLECTIVE MEMORY
2022 Calendar
deadline for submitting abstracts
13 May 2022
deadline for confirming selected abstracts
20 MAY 2022
deadline for submitting final papers
13 june 2022
Reviewers Panel
Dennis Deletant OBE is an Emeritus Professor at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London. He was formerly the Visiting Ion Rațiu Professor of Romanian Studies at Georgetown University until 2021. His previous books include Ceaușescu and the Securitate and Communist Terror in Romania, both published by Hurst Dennis Deletant OBE is Emeritus Professor at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London. He was formerly the Visiting Ion Rațiu Professor of Romanian Studies at Georgetown University. His previous books include Ceaușescu and the Securitate and Communist Terror in Romania, both published by Hurst.
Prof Carol Capiță graduated from the University of Bucharest, Faculty of History-Philosophy, in 1988. After a brief period as a Secondary School teacher (both in rural and urban schools), he became a staff member of his alma mater since 1990. He holds a PhD in Ancient History and a PhD in Educational Sciences. His interests (in the field of Education) lie in the area of curriculum development, the use of sources in History teaching, and the initial teacher training of History teachers. He published a number of articles on the Didactics of History, as well as being co-author (with Laura Capiţă) of two books on the Didactics of History, various teaching materials for the initial and continuing teacher training, and several History textbooks. He worked as an independent expert with the Council of Europe for the last 16 years.
Luciana Jinga (IICCMER) holds since September 2011 a PhD in History with a thesis on women within the Romanian Communist Party, 1944-1989. Since October 2007 she is a researcher at The Institute for the Investigation of Communist Crimes and the Memory of the Romanian Exile in Bucharest Romania. She is also a research associate at UMR CNRS 6258, Université d’Angers, France. Her latest publications: coauthor of “The demographic programme of Nicolae Ceausescu’s regime. A comparative study” (Corina Doboș, Florin Soare) vol. I, Polirom, Iaşi, 2010; coauthor and coordinator of the second volume “Institutions and practices” (Corina Doboș, Florin Soare) Polirom, Iaşi; “Citoyenneté et Travail des Femmes dans la Roumanie Communiste”, in “History of Communism in Europe”, vol. III-Communism, “Nationalism, and State Building in Post-War Europe”, Zeta Books, București, 2012. She coordinates since 2010 “The Yearbook of the Institute for the Investigation of Communist Crimes and the Memory of the Romanian Exile: Between transformation and adaptation. She has a strong interest in the evolution and characteristics of the communist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe and in gender-related research (women’s political activism, pronatalist politics) and also in the history of childhood during the second half of the XX century.
Dalia Bathory (IICCMER) is a PhD in European Studies and International Relations, Babes-Bolyai University, researcher and coordinator of the yearbook History of Communism in Europe, edited by the Institute of the Investigation of the Communist Crimes and the Memory of the Romanian Exile. Her areas of research and most recent research projects include history and memory in postsocialist Central and Eastern Europe, the history of the Hungarian minority in Communist Romania, political protest and detention during the 80s Romania, illegal border crossings during the 70s and the 80s Romania. Latest publications: “Maghiarii din România în comunism: între internationalism și naționalismul românesc” [Hungarians in Romania during Communism: between Internationalism and Romanian Nationalism], in Liliana Corobca (ed.) Panorama comunismului în România [Panoramic over Communism in Romania], Polirom, Iași, 2020; Borbély Ernő, Academia politică de la Aiud. Deținuți politici în România anilor ՚80 [The Political Academy in Aiud. Political Prisoners in 80s Romania], Polirom, Iași, 2019 (Dalia Bathory, Andreea Cârstea eds.); Dalia Bathory, Stefan Bosomitu, Cosmin Budeanca (coord.), România de la comunism la postcomunism. Criză, transformare, democratizare [Romania from Communism to Post-communism. Crisis, Transformation, Democratization], Anuarul Institutului de Investigare a Crimelor Comunismului și Memoria Exilului Românesc, vol. XIV-XV, 2019-2020, Polirom, Iași, 2020.
Dr Raul Cârstocea is a lecturer in Twentieth-Century European History at Maynooth University, Ireland. He has previously worked as a lecturer in Modern European History at the University of Leicester, as a lecturer in European Studies at Europa Universität Flensburg, as a senior research associate at the European Centre for Minority Issues, and as a teaching fellow at University College London. He has held research fellowships at the Imre Kértesz Kolleg Jena, the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Amsterdam, and at the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies. His research interests focus on antisemitism, Jewish history, nationalism, fascism, and the Holocaust, and more broadly on state formation and nation-building processes in the XIX and XX century Central and Eastern Europe and their consequences for minority groups. He has co-edited with Éva Kovács a volume entitled “Modern Antisemitism in the Peripheries: Europe and its Colonies, 1880-1945” (Vienna, 2019) and has published extensively on the history of antisemitism, fascism, and the Holocaust in Romania and, more broadly, Eastern Europe. He is co-editor with Paul Jackson of the “Modern History of Politics and Violence” book series at Bloomsbury Academic, and a member of the editorial board of the academic journal S:I.M.O.N. Shoah: Interventions. Methods. Documentation. He is also Vice-Chair of the Scientific Advisory Council of the Observatory on History Teaching in Europe at the Council of Europe.
Dr. Leon Hartwell is a Sotirov Fellow at IDEAS, the London School of Economics, and a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) in Washington D.C. His research interests include conflict resolution, genocide, transitional justice, diplomacy, democracy, and the Western Balkans. Previously, Hartwell was CEPA’s Acting Director of the Transatlantic Leadership Program and a Title VIII Fellow. From 2012 to 2013, he was also the Senior Policy Advisor for Political and Development Cooperation at the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Zimbabwe, where his work included government and civil society engagement, political reporting, peacebuilding projects, and supporting human rights defenders. Prior to that, he was a policy officer at the Netherlands Embassy in South Africa, where he conducted project management and analyzed domestic and regional issues, including elections, peace processes, and democracy. In 2019, Hartwell completed a joint doctoral degree summa cum laude at Leipzig University (Germany) and Stellenbosch University (South Africa). His thesis analyzed the use of mediation in the resolution of armed conflicts. He also holds undergraduate and graduates degrees from the University of Pretoria, where from 2005 to 2009, he lectured in the Political Sciences Department on international relations and politics. In addition, Hartwell has also lectured at the Stockholm School of Economics in Riga and presented guest lectures at universities and institutions in the U.S., Japan, Australia, Latvia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe. He has published extensively in professional journals and mainstream media ranging from the Negotiation Journal (Harvard-MIT-Tufts) to Balkan Insight. He speaks Afrikaans, English, Dutch, and Latvian, which he studied at the U.S. Foreign Service Institute.
Lavinia Betea graduated from the History and Philosophy Faculty, the Philosophy-History department, and obtained a PhD in Psychology at the ”Babeş-Bolyai” University, in Cluj-Napoca. She is currently a professor of social and political psychology and director of the European Institute “Serge Moscow” at the ”Aurel Vlaicu” University, in Arad. She has been enabled as a PhD coordinator in humanistic sciences by the ”Paul Valery” Montpellier 3 University and in communication sciences by the ”Babeş-Bolyai” University. A printed press and television journalist, she has established and led the Recent History section of newspapers Jurnalul Național (2004-2011) and Adevărul (2011-2013). She is currently a collaborator of the Romanian national broadcaster TVR for the documentary series called Adevăruri despre trecut. She published, as an author or as a coordinator, 25 volumes, around one hundred scientific articles and over two thousand media articles. In 2003, she received the “Nicolae Bălcescu” Prize from the Romanian Academy for her book Lucrețiu Pătrășcanu – moartea unui lider comunist, the Humanitas Publishing House, Bucharest, 2001. Her areas of scientific interest include political psychology, recent history, oral history, media communication.