The Ratiu Forum History Teaching Programme
The Ratiu Forum Teaching of History Programme is a three-year project consisting of a series of online and offline workshops to be held between 2021 and 2023 in Turda, Transylvania, at the Ratiu Democracy Centre. The workshops follow a strategy devised by LSE IDEAS, which is based on the analysis of a pilot workshop held in Turda in February 2020, attended by 20 history teachers from 9 Romanian counties, who requested follow-up workshops. The programme agenda includes webinars and offline events, as well as research paper competitions for master and doctoral history students.
Scroll down for details regarding the latest workshop.
Activities in 2023
HISTORY WORKSHOP 10-12 FEBRUARY 2023
RATIU CENTRE, TURDA
mission
The History Teaching Workshops address the hidden history of Romania and the region – what is not covered today by the school curriculum. We bring together experts from the Balkan region to share experiences on how best to tackle the issue of low historical content and to advise on how to approach problematic historical events.
vision
- When citizens of a society are critical and well-informed about their society, and their past, they are better placed to engage with democratic institutions and participate in civic life.
- The Ratiu Forum Teaching of History Programme aims to challenge uncritical thinking about the past and aims to improve the didactic teaching of history.
- We envisage a Romania in which students of history learn about a past that is as complex and rich as human beings are, rather than a simplistic tale of national accomplishments or a zero-sum game of winners and losers. We support an education system that encourages young minds to approach historical narratives with a critical appreciation of its complexity and an understanding that events in the past continue to influence contemporary society.
Activities in 2022
THE RATIU FORUM TEACHING OF HISTORY WORKSHOP
26-27 March 2022
Rațiu Conference Centre, Turda
This workshop was open to history teachers and final year history university students.
EVENT PHOTOS
SPEAKERS
Christopher Coker is Professor of International Relations at LSE. His publications include The Rise of the Civilizational State (2019); Rebooting Clausewitz (2018); Men at War; what fiction tells us about conflict from The Iliad to Catch 22 (2014); Warrior Geeks: how 21st century technology is changing the way we fight and think about war (Oxford University Press 2013) and Barbarous Philosophers: reflections on the nature of war from Heraclitus to Heisenberg (Columbia University Press 2010). He has written for The Times, Times Literary Supplement, The Financial Times, The Spectator, the Independent and The Wall St Journal. He has been a Visiting Fellow at National Institute of Defence Studies (Tokyo); the Rajaratnam School National technological University (Singapore), the Institute for Security Studies (Chulalongkorn University Bangkok) and is a regular lecturer at staff colleges and academies around the world. He is at present Visiting Professor in War Studies at the Swedish National Defence College.
John Lotherington is director of the 21st Century Trust in London, which in 2009 forged a long-term partnership with Salzburg Global Seminar where John also leads the health and health care innovation programs. He began his career in history education and maintains an interest in that area. His publications as editor and author include The Communications Revolution; Years of Renewal: European History 1470 to 1600; The Seven Ages of Life; The Tudor Years; and introductions to The Florentine Histories by Niccolò Machiavelli, The Book of the Courtier by Baldassare Castiglione, and the Divine Comedy by Dante. He is an associate board member, and former Chair, of the Foundation for Democracy and Sustainable Development, a trustee of Cumberland Lodge, and a governor of Goodenough College, London.
Eric Beckett Weaver is an associate professor teaching political science at the University of Debrecen. He received his doctorate in History from The University of Oxford in 2008. He is the author and editor of a variety of books and articles on nationalism, minorities, and politics in Southeastern Europe.
Dr. Slobodan G. Markovich, MBE is Full Professor at the School of Political Science of the University of Belgrade where he lectures Political Anthropology, Political History of South-East Europe and Image of European Other. He is also Full Professor at the Institute for European Studies in Belgrade. He has been Research Associate at LSEE/LSE since 2012, and at LSE IDEAS since 2018. He has been the head of the Centre for British Studies at the School of Political Science in Belgrade since 2017. His published monographs include a book on Freud’s pessimism: Pessimistic Anthropology of Sigmund Freud (Belgrade, 2012), on Serbian economist, politician and diplomat Chedomille Miyatovich. A Victorian among Serbs (Belgrade, 2006), and a monograph on British-(Balkan)Serbian relations: British Perceptions of Serbia and the Balkans 1903-1906 (Paris, 2000, in English). His (co-)edited collections of papers in English include: British-Serbian Relations from the 18th to the 21st Centuries (Belgrade, 2018), Problems of Identities in the Balkans (Belgrade, 2006), and Challenges to New Democracies in the Balkans (Belgrade, 2004). He has been the coordinator of annual meetings “Psychoanalysis and Culture” since 2016.His research interests include: Construction of Ethnic/National and Religious Identities in the Balkans, British-Balkan Relations, psychoanalytic anthropology, and History of European Pessimism.
James Ker-Lindsay is Visiting Professor in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Kent and a research associate at the London School of Economics and Oxford University. He has published extensively on conflict, peace and security in South East Europe, EU enlargement, and secession and recognition in International Relations. His books include The Foreign Policy of Counter-Secession (Oxford University Press), The Cyprus Problem: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford University Press), Kosovo: The Path to Contested Statehood in the Balkans (Bloomsbury), and New Perspectives on Yugoslavia: Key Issues and Controversies (Routledge, co-edited with Dejan Djokic). His next book, Secession and State Creation: What Everyone Needs to Know, will be published by Oxford University Press this Spring. As well as his academic work, he has also served as an advisor to a number of governments and international organisations and has worked at the British Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO). In addition, he also has his own YouTube channel exploring contemporary international relations, conflict and statehood: www.youtube.com/c/
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.
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.
Vlad Zigarov is European Affairs Associate at LSE IDEAS and senior adviser on foreign policy at the European Union in Brussels. He holds an MSc in International History from LSE and an MA from the School of Slavonic and East European Studies at UCL. He previously studied Philosophy, History, and International Affairs at the University of Bucharest and worked for various state and private organisations in Romania, the UK and Belgium.
Saturday 26th March 2022
11.00
Welcome&Introduction
Christopher Coker and Mr Nicolae Rațiu
11:30 – 13:00
The politicisation of history
Speakers: Christopher Coker and Vlad Zigarov
Moderator: John Lotherington
14:30 – 16.00
RO Teaching Romania’s darker past
Speakers: Carol Capiţă and Raul Cârstocea
Moderator: John Lotherington
Sunday 27th March 2022
11:30 – 13:00
Nationalism and the curriculum
Speakers: Eric Weaver, Slobodan Markovich, James Ker-Lindsay
Moderator: John Lotherington
13:30 – 15.00
RO Fireside chat
Speakers: John Lotherington and Christopher Coker
Activities in 2022
THE RATIU FORUM TEACHING OF HISTORY WEBINAR
29-30 January 2022
Online Event
SPEAKERS
Adrian-Nicolae Furtună graduated from the Faculty of Sociology and Social Work, the Department of Sociology of the University of Bucharest and the master’s programme in Advanced Sociological Research from the same university. He is currently working on his PhD thesis on the social memory of Roma slavery at the Quality of Life Research Institute of Romanian Academy. Since 2010 he has published a series of oral history papers and scientific articles on Roma slavery and Roma deportation to Transnistria, including: “Why don’t they cry? Roma Holocaust and its true story” (2012): “Roma culture between <cardboard boats> and reality” (2015); “Romanian Roma and the Holocaust. History, theory, culture” (2018); “Roma slavery in Wallachia. Fragments of social history. Children sales/ donations. Marriages. Petitions for emancipation” (2019); “The deportation of Roma soldiers’ families to Transnistria: Between administrative and biopolitical imperatives” (Furtuna et al., 2021). He is the director of Cultural
and Social Research Center “Romane Rodimata” and counsellor in the Documentation and Research Department of the National Centre of Roma
Culture from Romania.
Emanuel–Marius Grec is a PhD Researcher in History at the University of Heidelberg, Germany. ELES Research Fellow until September 2021 and Saul Kagan Fellow in Advanced Shoah Studies from September 2021. His research areas include the Holocaust in Romania, transitional justice, and the History of Eastern European Jews. Emanuel holds a BA in History from Vasile Goldiș University of Arad, an MA in Comparative History from Central European University in Budapest, and an MA in Jewish Studies from Hochschule für Jüdische Studien in Heidelberg. He is the winner of the 2021 Ratiu Forum History Award.
Luciana Jinga 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 political activism, pronatalist politics) and also in the history of childhood during the second half of the XX century.
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.
Louisa Slavkova is the director of the Sofia Platform Foundation. She is an advisory board member of the European Network for Civic Education. In 2021 she co-founded the pan-European platform for civic education – THE CIVICS Innovation Hub. Since 2019 she is co-head of the Capacity Building Program at Civic Europe, a program for locally rooted civic actors in so-called civic deserts in Hungary, Poland, Romania and Bulgaria. Prior to that, Louisa has been a Ronald Lauder Visiting Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Human Rights at Columbia University, NYC, programs manager at ECFR and adviser to Bulgaria’s Foreign Minister Nickolay Mladenov. She is author and editor of several books and publications on foreign policy, democracy development and civic education, as well as co-author of a textbook on civic education in Bulgaria.
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.
Currently a reporter working for the alternative publication Dela0, Diana Oncioiu is also a member of the Să Fie Lumină project, initiated by Dela0.ro and the Center for Media Investigations. She has a background in broadcasting, having worked for five years for Realitatea TV and Digi24. She covers mainly social topics – domestic violence, education, social assistance, extreme poverty, social exclusion – and is the author of a series of in depth reportages covering topic like: the social reintegration of former inmates, life in the undergrounds of the Bucharest neighborhood Ferentari, human trafficking and the trialing of sexual crimes with child victims. Diana Oncioiu is the 2020 recipient of the Ion Ratiu Journalism Award.
Patrick Vaughan is a professor at Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland. His article “Beyond Benign Neglect: Zbigniew Brzezinski and the Polish Crisis of 1980,” won the John Snell Memorial Award. This article was later published in the Polish Review after which Brzezinski sent Vaughan a congratulatory letter offering exclusive access to his personal archives. Vaughan later published the first authorized biography of Brzezinski focusing on his strategic views toward the Soviet Union and East-Central Europe. In 2010 this work was nominated for the Kazimierz Moczarski Award for outstanding books related to modern Polish history. In 2013 Vaughan contributed a chapter to Charles Gati’s anthology “Zbig” describing Brzezinski’s relationship with Pope John Paul II in helping to undermine Soviet control over Poland in the late 1970s.
Alexandra Ghiț is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the ERC project ZARAH: Women’s labour activism in Eastern Europe and transnationally, from the age of empires to the late 20th century, hosted by Central European University Vienna. Her research interests include women’s labour history (with a focus on twentieth-century Eastern Europe), the history and sociology of social policy and the social history of state socialisms. In the ZARAH project, her research focus is women’s labour activism in the Romanian tobacco industry since the 19th century. Between January and June 2022 she is a Fellow of the Imre Kertész Kolleg Jena.
Dalia Bathory 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 include 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, history and memory in postsocialist Central and Eastern Europe. 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.
Saturday 29 January 2022
Sunday 30 January 2022
11.00 – 11.30
Introduction
Mr Nicolae Rațiu and Prof Christopher Coker
11:30 – 13:45
Representation of women in modern history
Speakers: Alexandra Ghiț (CEU, Austria), Luciana Jinga (Université d’Angers, France), Diana Oncioiu (Dela0.ro)
15:30 – 17:45
The history of minorities in Central and Eastern Europe
Speakers: Adrian Furtună (Research Institute for Quality of Life – Romanian Academy), Dalia Bathory (PhD in International Relations and European Studies), Emanuel Grec (University of Heidelberg, Germany)
11:30 – 13:00
History national curriculum challenges
Speakers: Raul Cârstocea (Maynooth University, Ireland), Carol Capiță (University of Bucharest, Romania)
14:00 – 15.30
Why does history matter?
Speakers: Louisa Slavkova (Sofia Platform Foundation, Bulgaria), Raul Cârstocea, Patrick Vaughan (Jagiellonian University)
15.30 – 16.00
Wrap up session
Prof Christopher Coker
ACTIVITIES IN 2021
TEACHING OF HISTORY WEBINAR - spring edition
The webinar is scheduled for 8-9 May 2021 and is open to history teachers and final year history university students. The number of participants will be limited to 25 and candidates will go through a selection process.
Saturday 8 May 2021
Sunday 9 May 2021
9.00am UK / 11.00am RO
Welcome and Introduction
Christopher Coker and Nicolae Ratiu
09:30-11.00 UK /11:30-13:00 RO
The politicisation of history
Speakers: Christopher Coker and Vlad Zigarov
Moderator: Christopher Coker
12.30–14:00 UK / 14:30–16:00 RO
Teaching Romania’s darker past
Speakers: Carol Căpiţă and Raul Cârstocea
Moderator: Carol Capiţă
09:30-11.00 UK /11:30-13:00 RO
Nationalism and the curriculum
Speakers: Eric Weaver and Slobodan Markovich
Moderator: Christopher Coker
11.30-12:00 UK / 13:30-14:00 RO
Concluding thoughts and wrapping up
Christopher Coker and panellists