Maria Alina Asavei

PhD, Senior Lecturer, Charles University in Prague/PolArt - University of Bucharest (Project Director)

Maria-Alina Asavei is a senior lecturer at the Russian and East European Department (Institute of International Studies, Charles University) and an independent curator of contemporary art. She is a former honorary research fellow at City University of New York (CUNY) and at the American Research Center in Sofia (ARCS). In 2018-2019 she received the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Faculty Fellow, Centre for Orthodox Studies, Fordham University, New York. She is currently the Scientist in charge for Charles University within Horizon 2020 research project POPREBEL: Populist rebellion against modernity (2019-2021). She has published articles and book chapters with prestigious journals and publishing houses, such as Oxford University Press, Memory Studies, Journal of Aesthetics and Culture, European Journal of Women’s Studies. Her book Aesthetics, Disinterestedness and Effectiveness in Political Art (Lexington Books, 2018) deals with the concatenation of art, politics & aesthetics from a philosophical perspective. Her current book project is titled Art, Religion and Resistance in (Post-) Communist Romania - Nostalgia for Paradise Lost (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020).

Caterina Preda

PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, PolArt, University of Bucharest

Caterina Preda holds a PhD in Political Science of the University of Bucharest (2009) and has had several undergraduate and post-graduate scholarships in Europe and South America, as well as postdoctoral fellowships. Associate 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 and politics of memory 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.

Manuela Marin

PhD, Museum curator, National Museum of Transylvanian History, Cluj-Napoca, PolArt-University of Bucharest

Manuela Marin holds a PhD in Contemporary History of the Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca (2008). She is an associate lecturer at the Babeș-Bolyai University where she teaches seminars on ‘History of the 20^th century’, ‘Intelligence and Counterintelligence during the 20^th Century’ (in English and Romanian) and ‘Sources and Research Methods in Contemporary and Recent History’. Between 2010 and 2012 she had a postdoctoral fellowship from the CNCS (now UEFISCDI), followed by another fellowship at the American Research Centre in Sofia in 2014. She continued to work as a postdoctoral researcher in the Horizon 2020 Research Project COURAGE (2018-2019), in an EEA Grant on The Untold Story. An Oral History of Roma People in Romania at the Oral History Institute, Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca (2015-2017). She authored two books on Nicolae Ceaușescu’s cult of personality and edited another one on the history of the Roma during the communist regime in Romania. She published several scientific articles in national peer-reviewed journals, as well as chapters in volumes published by Routledge and Berghahn Books.