Lavinia Stan's Blog

Happy to see friends at the 2024 conference in Sibiu. My keynote address was on

Using Cross-Disciplinarity in Religion and Politics: A view

Abstract The field of Religion and Politics has been fertile ground for linkages that cross disciplinary boundaries. Religious studies scholars, political scientists, sociologists and anthropologists, as well as historians have pondered over numerous research questions meant to uncover the interplay between religious organizations, symbols, traditions and practices, on the one hand, and political processes, institutions and actors, on another hand. This talk will review some of the key works on religion and politics, and propose ways in which cross-disciplinarity can contribute to the advancement of our understanding.

More here: https://conferences.ulbsibiu.ro/asjrps/programme/

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Year 2024 marks the 35th anniversary of the collapse of the communist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe, including Romania. In 2015, Diane Vancea and I put together a book commemorating the 25th anniversary and told ourselves that younger academics will take the hint to mark the 30th anniversary. To our surprise, nothing happened. Complete silence. This is the reason why we decided to gather scholars for the 35th anniversary. Of course, this new book had to complement rather than simply repeat what we’ve done at the 25th anniversary. So we chose new themes, brought in new people, thought about another overarching topic. Progress and stagnation, success and failure, intended and unintended consequences was the topic, discussed in relation to the elites, the elections and party system, the fight against corruption, health care, education, military, and other fields. last week we sent all files to Palgrave, which already sent the cover. This is it!

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Being a journal editor means that sometimes one can be annoyingly demanding of poor authors. Change this, explain that, add another paragraph, condense the discussion on these pages. Authors, and to my surprise even reviewers, can get frustrated with this entire process. But there is no greater satisfaction than seeing a worthwhile article making it to the finish line, and appearing in print. For one of these articles, the author was kind enough to make a gift. The best gift ever. Wishing her all the best in her academic career! I’m sure she will publish many other articles.

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The ASEEES conference in Philadelphia was momentous for me. Meeting and reconnecting with new and old friends, planning new projects, commenting on a presentation, discussing fashionable topics. All these in addition of attending the EEPS gala where I was told that the baton will change subito. As such, since December 2023 James Krapfl and I are the happy co-editors-in-chief of this academic journal, published by Sage. I feel that I came full circle since publishing the article on the Ticu law and the Securitate archives.

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It is with great satisfaction that I post here a link to the final report prepared as part of the CHACHIPEN project, under the leadership and guidance of Dr. Sergio Carrera. A great pleasure to take part in this important endeavour, to ponder over some important questions, and make some small proposals. The final report, co-authored by Ana Carballo-Mesa, Sergio Carrera, Pedro Casermeiro Cortes, Iulius Rostas, Jan Selling, and Lavinia Stan, is titled “Paving the Way for Truth and Reconciliation Process to Address Antigypsyism in Europe: Remembrance, Recognition, Justice and Trust-Building” and released by the Center for European Policy Research. The link is https://www.ceps.eu/ceps-publications/paving-the-way-for-truth-and-reconciliation-process-to-address-antigypsyism-in-europe/.

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It was my pleasure on 30 October 2023 to deliver an online presentation on my doctoral thesis, the ideas that inspired me, my fieldwork, and the conclusions that I reached. Titled “Capital social si guvernanta in Romania postcomunista” the talk was delivered to the first year students in the doctoral program of the Faculty of Political Science, the University of Bucharest. Facilitated by Prof. Cristian Preda, it brought me back almost thirty years ago, when I was excited about social capital and governance in Italy and beyond.

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In mid-June 2023, the “Transitional Justice for Competing Pasts” group had two excellent and very informative meetings in Rome and Bari, where they discussed both the theoretical and methodological framework underpinning the comparison, and some of the countries we selected for this analysis. Our thanks to our hosts, Emilia Zankina of Temple University as well as Egeria Nalin and her colleagues at University Aldo Moro di Bari, for graciously helping us organize these events.

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This year was special for me. In January 2023, I took over from Kalwant Bhopal the position of editor-in-chief of Women’s Studies International Forum, an Elsevier peer-reviewed scholarly journal for which I served as an Associate Editor for close to 15 years. Kalwant was a wonderful editor, who managed to steer the journal gracefully for ten years, with an ease that I always admired. WSIF remains committed to interdisciplinary and diversity. The vast majority of our authors are from the Global South, including India, South Africa, Turkey, China, Egypt, and Iran. The vast majority of our reviewers are scholars working in universities outside of North America and Western Europe. Elsevier offers superb assistance through a dedicated editor who is helpful and knowledgeable. Some of the articles we publish are open access.

I must be very famous since Elsevier presents the WSIF editor-in-chief as “Stan”.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/womens-studies-international-forum

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Finally, with considerable delay, the second edition of the Encyclopedia was printed in May 2023. It was a long journey, unexpectedly delayed by covid. Thank you to all contributor, the CUP editors and John Berger, who was instrumental in this project.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/encyclopedia-of-transitional-justice/CA0F35DE904F62B915344C4E55D1E188

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