Romanian-Moldovan Study Group Conference

Cluj-Napoca, Romania, 10-11th July 2008

The Romanian-Moldovan Study Group held a two-day conference in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, on the 10-11th July. The event was co-organised by Professor Dennis Deletant and Daniel Brett of SSEES with Dr Marius Bucur and Reka Geambasu of The ‘Babeş-Bolyai’ University in Cluj-Napoca, and was funded by CEELBAS, the UCL Graduate School, the Ratiu Family Foundation, SSEES, and the Department of Contemporary History and International Relations at ‘Babeş-Bolyai’.

The conference brought together young scholars working on Romanian and Moldovan issues from Romania, Hungary, Sweden and the United States as well as scholars from SSEES and CEELBAS partner universities of Oxford and Birmingham. The conference provided an opportunity for a discussion of new topics and approaches to issues affecting Romania and Moldova, as well as foregrounding original research on ethnic communities (Transylvanian Hungarians and Csangos) within an interdisciplinary framework encompassing history, literature, anthropology and political science.

Thirty-two papers were presented at the conference, all by students who had either recently completed their doctoral degrees, or were on the point of doing so. Most of the sessions were chaired by the Ph.D students; for the majority this was a novel experience and constituted, on their admission, a valuable training exercise. The conference is part of an ongoing series of workshops and conferences organised by the Romanian-Moldovan Studies Group and aimed at promoting the work of young researchers working in this field. Further information on the group can be found at http://www.ssees.ac.uk/romanian-moldovanstudies.htm.

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