RESULTS

2026

2025

The research activities carried out in 2025 as part of the NUTRIPOL project, Nutrition, Medical Knowledge, and Social Change: An Analysis of Life Policies in Late Socialism (TE), were structured in accordance with the agreed work plan. Thus, the team began its documentation activities in January 2025 by reviewing the secondary bibliography at the BCU Cluj and Bucharest, the UMF Cluj and Bucharest libraries, and the Academy Library in Bucharest and Cluj on the project topic (the entire team, according to the research directions assumed). The documentation covered a wide range of issues, such as mapping nutritional policies in the discourse of the communist regime, food supply strategies for the population, programs for the development and diversification of the food industry, plans to modernize agriculture in the decades following collectivization, as well as the collection of data on medical statistics and research by the medical community on the relationship between diet and the dynamics of morbidity and mortality from cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and cancer in Romania since the 1960s.

This preliminary data formed the basis for the extensive archival documentation work carried out by the team starting in March 2025.  The following archives were taken into account: the Central Historical Archives in Bucharest (CC of the PCR, Chancellery, Economic, Agrarian and Foreign Relations departments, Presidency of the Council of Ministers, Ministry of Food Industry), the Archive of the National Institute of Statistics (Standard of Living, Population Statistics, Medical Statistics), and the TVR written and video archive (Department of Public Opinion and Audience Surveys, TV program collection). In addition, two documentation internships in Geneva (Mara Mărginean) between July 15 and 25 and October 19 and 30, respectively, focused on exploring food issues in the archives of the International Labor Organization (funds on Romania, Labor Relations, Nutrition, Food and Agriculture Organization, World Health Organization), the United Nations – ECOSOC (Agriculture), and the World Health Organization (Nutrition, Food and Agriculture Organization, UNICEF, ILO). Such an incredibly complex research plan sought to respond to the thesis underlying the project, namely, the need to problematize the relationship between science and labor, and to analyze the responsibility of the bureaucratic nation-state for the nutrition of the workforce. We argue that medical knowledge represented a specific form of modern power, which underpinned rational decision-making and the normalization of social life in a productivist logic of a society undergoing modernization. Thus, the NUTRIPOL team analyzed nutrition in the context of state-building practices, human resource management, and technological progress. In doing so, this project takes a new perspective and reveals the ideologies and methods behind experts' actions within broader frameworks of transnational involvement. The research was structured along three major lines:

I.        Statistics on nutritional well-being during late socialism;

II.      The rational nutrition program (1980s);

III.    The link between nutrition and cardiovascular disease in medical discourse in the 1960s and 1970s.

Interim results: 3 chapters accepted for publication in collective volumes published by prestigious international publishers; 1 article in a journal indexed Web of Science as part of a special issue proposal accepted by the journal's editors; 1 international workshop; 2 sessions/panels organized at international conferences; 14 presentations at international conferences; 3 participations in national conferences; 2 workshops for public dissemination of the project.

Publications in journals/collective volumes published by prestigious international publishing houses

• Mara Mărginean, "The Center for Enterprise Management Education (CEPECA) during the Global 1970s," in Global Romania: Solidarity and Development during the Cold War, ed. Bogdan C. Iacob, Jill Massino, Mioara Anton, Luciana Jinga (Budapesta & New York: CEU Press, 2025). (forthcoming) (editură internatională de prestigiu)

• Mara Mărginean (în colaborare cu Jill Massino), "Neither Bread Nor Circus: Food Policies and Procurement in late Socialist Romania," in Food and Food Policies in Modern Dictatorships, ed. Lisa Pine (Londra: Bloomsbury Publishing House, 2026) (volum contractat cu editura pentru anul 2026). (editură internațională de prestigiu)

• Mara Mărginean, „Managing Institutional Risks, Controlling Health: The Politics of Nutrition in Late Socialist Romania,” Science in Context (2026), revistă indexată Web of Science (https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/science-in-context) – proposal for a special issue entitled "Risk, Health, and State Socialism: Central and Eastern Europe, 1950s-1980" accepted by the journal's editors (editorial project carried out by the working group Risk, Health, and State Socialism: Central and Eastern Europe, 1950s-1980s. Institute for the History of Medicine and Ethics in Medicine, Charité – University of Medicine Berlin, coordinated by Jakub Střelec. 

• Corina Maria Dobos, "In and out: the impossible mission of the Centre Démographique ONU-Roumanie  (CEDOR) in the developing world," in Global Romania: Solidarity and Development during the Cold War, ed. Bogdan C. Iacob, Jill Massino, Mioara Anton, Luciana Jinga (Budapesta & New York: CEU Press, 2025). (forthcoming) (editură internațională de prestigiu)

Participation in conferences, workshops, and public events

Events involving the entire team:

• January 29: Workshop – “Food during communism: politics, medical knowledge, and everyday experiences.” (Guests alongside the team: Camelia Zavarache, Nicolae Iorga Institute of History, Călin Cotoi, University of Bucharest, Bogdan Murgescu, University of Bucharest, Florin Abraham, INST). Friedrich Shiller Cultural Center, Bucharest. Roundtable: 2025 (May 29-31, 2025) – "(Dis)Continued Histories of Welfare Approaches in Romania in the Short 20th Century." Society for Romanian Studies Conference, Cluj-Napoca.  

• October 15: International workshop: Food and Agriculture in State Socialism: Knowledge, Policies and Practices (October 15, George Barițiu Institute of History) (see attached event program):

o   Mara Mărginean: „Germinating Collaboration: Seed Science and International Exchange in Socialist Romania”

o Corina Maria Doboș: „Main Concerns of Public Health in Socialist Romania: Stylistic Effects and Professional Rivalries”

o  Bogdan Vârșan: “The Human Being and Their Health.” Media Representation of Nutrition and Public Health during the Communist Regime: The Case of the Romanian Television”

• October 16-18, 2025: Panel at the Cluj Academic Days, international conference of the George Barițiu Institute of History in Cluj-Napoca: on the topic of „Paradigme, politici și experți: abordări ale bunăstării în scurtul secol XX,” bringing together presentations from the entire team:

o   Mara Mărginean: „Ce a fost rațional în alimentația rațională în ani 1980?”

o   Corina Maria Doboș: „Nutriția copilului în perioada socialismului târziu.”

o   Bogdan Vârșan: „Strategii vizuale de educație nutrițională în perioada socialismului târziu prin lentila TVR.”

Mara Mărginean

• November 6-7: National Conference of the Faculty of History of the University of Bucharest, with the paper „Sensurile unei societăți sănătoase: Dezbateri (inter)naționale privind alimentația forței de muncă în anii 1970”

• October 23 - 24: ASEEES 57th Annual Convention, cu lucrarea: "Nutrition Regulations in Times of Economic Crisis: The Case of Rational Scientific Nutrition Program in 1980s Romania." Virtual / November 20 - 23, 2025, Washington, DC.

• August 26-29: EAHMH 2025: Health Beyond Medicine, Humboldt University Berlin. Lucrare prezentată: „Managing Institutional Risks, Controlling Health: The Politics of Nutrition in Late Socialist Romania.”

• May 29, 2025, during the History Marathon event organized by the George Baritiu Institute of History in partnership with the Cluj County School Inspectorate, Mara Marginean gave a presentation to students at the Tiberiu Popoviciu High School of Informatics on the nutritional policies of the communist regime.

• May 5: Risk, Health, and State Socialism: Central and Eastern Europe, 1950s-1980s. Institute for the History of Medicine and Ethics in Medicine, Charité – University of Medicine Berlin, "Nutrition and Health Risk Management in Times of Economic Recession: The Case of the Rational Scientific Nutrition Program in 1980s Romania."

• March 26-29: "Medical Knowledge, Nutrition and Social Change: An Inquiry into the Politics of Life in Late Socialist Romania." ESSHC – Leiden

Corina Maria Doboș

• November 20-21: Forme de asociere în România (secolele XIX-XXI): asociații profesionale, organizații sindicale și patronale, cluburi și societăți secrete, Faculty of History, University of Bucharest, with the paper: „Medicina ocupațională  în România comunistă: experți, transferuri de cunoaștere  și realități locale”

• August 26-29: EAHMH 2025: Health Beyond Medicine, Humboldt University Berlin: Corina Maria Doboș, section organizer: Worlds of Labor, Worlds of Health: Occupational Health and Safety in State Socialism.

o   „Translating workers' health across the Iron Curtain: transnational formation in occupational health and safety of Romanian professionals in the 1970s (Corina Doboș)”

• July 9: Romania as a Global Cold War Actor in Politics and Culture, New Europe College, "Ego-documents for a Global History of Labour: Romanian Professionals and ILO Formation Stages in Organizational Health and Safety at the End of the 1960s." 

Bogdan Vârsan

• November 6-7: National Conference of the Faculty of History of the University of Bucharest, with the paper „Reprezentarea alimentației și sănătății în programele TV din România anilor '70-'80”