Индивидуални проекти

Задачата на проекта е да изследва конкуренцията и сътрудничеството между държавните и частно-търговските интереси на ключови руски и български, държавни и частни субеки като двигатели за развитието на морската инфраструктура в Черноморския регион - пристанищата Варна и Одеса. Предмет на изследване са Руската парно-плавателна и търговска компания (основана през 1856 г.) и Българското търговско коробоплаване (основано през 1893 г.). Проектът се фокусира върху периода от 1956 г. до началото на Първата световна война. Работната хипотеза е, че създаването на морската инфраструктура е хибриден проект. Резултат е от процеса на едновременната конфронтация и договаряне, представян като стратегия за всестранна изгода - както за правителствените и имперските субекти, така и за интересите на частните предприемачи и търговци. Трансферът на знание в този процес също е значим фактор. Със специфичния си подход към развитието на морската инфраструктура изследването се стреми да отличи комплексния характер на модернизационния процес, в който двете линии на влияние - "отгоре-надолу" и "отдолу-нагоре" - са преплетени в постоянно напрежение, но и сътрудничество. Проектът следва методологическата рамка на т.нар. "преплетени модерности". Предлаганият метод представлява интерпретативен анализ на официални и лични документи, свързани с посочените две компании.

Научният проект представлява новаторско изследване на социалната история на многоезичието на Балканите и по-точно се занимава с ролята и значимостта на гръцкия език от края на IX в. след появата на новата славянска писменост. Тезата на изследването - в противовес на установения научен консенсус - е, че Балканите са отчетливо многоезични. С работата си върху темата д-р Мирела Иванова иска да разкрие начините, по които многоезичието се проявява и практикува на терен. За да постигне тази задача, тя разчита на комплексен подход към ръкописните извори, епиграфските паметници от епохата, които тя възприема не само като носители на историческа информация, но и като обекти, чийто материалност е централна за формирането на тяхното значение.

The phenomenon of desertion during the 20th century conflicts still presents a very strong taboo in the Balkan historiographies. On the other hand, developments in western academia during the past 30 years made it clear that issues of military desertion and insubordination can provide valuable new perspectives. The aim of my project is to assemble and analyse the cases of desertion in the Bulgarian and Serbian army so that these cases can be treated as an analytical category. This way I will be able to reach out towards some of the most discrete processes of the front line developments in the Balkans. Two interlinked examples of Serbia and Bulgaria, the embattled neighbours, would present a significant step toward a more comprehensive understanding of everyday interactions within the two largest Balkan armies. As a result, I expect to show that the front line developments, attitudes and experiences of the men in uniform were much more complex than usually believed and that the “contract” between the state and its citizens during wartime had to be constantly renegotiated even in agrarian societies such as Serbian and Bulgarian one.

The research project is a comparative study of social mobility in the new towns, built in the 1950s and early 1960s in Bulgaria, former Czechoslovakia, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. It is a cross-European investigation into how these radical urban development projects, which aimed to improve social advance opportunities, were translated into reality. The research examines the similarities and divergences between East and West on the evolution of gender roles, the tensions between generations, old and new elites, rural and urban groups.After The Second World War new towns emerged across Europe on clear grounds. From the United Kingdom to the countries of the Communist Bloc, states engaged in sweeping projects of new town construction. Driven by pressing problems of urbanisation or urge to exploit natural resources, in almost all cases they were also aiming at boosting social mobility. The social history of these urban projects across have attracted attention - more significant regarding the Eastern Bloc and growing in the West. However the history of social mobility in new towns has never been seriously compared across national borders. The absence of comparative perspectives is somewhat paradoxical, since some parallels stand out clearly from the research in the East and the West. The investigations of these parallels are the research objectives of this project, aiming to discuss comparatively the nature, the effect and the renegotiation of the paradigms for equality, which motivated the new towns’ construction. It enquires if, how and for whom did the new towns provide social mobility in Europe across four division lines, visible from the extant literature: gender social mobility; social mobility between old and new elites, urban-rural social mobility, social mobility and generations.

European influence on Russian religious sphere, and particularly on monasticism and monastic practices of Early Modern time if of great interest to historians and philologists. Monastic preaching and practices connected with death preparation, that is writing of testaments and giving donations to churches and monasteries, are a seminal source for study of cultural transfer and ideology. The project is devoted to the study of funeral piety of Russian monastics of the second half of the 17th century in a broader European context. It addresses origins of these practices, the ways in which they were transferred to Russia mainly through Polish culture which served as a mediator, and then adopted by Russian monastics. Drawing on interconnection of various disciplines and directions of research, the project will provide materials and knowledge for building a wider perspective on European cultural transfer that shaped cultural ground in Early Modern Russia.

My research project investigates explicit and implicit state language policies in the eastern part of Dualist Hungary (1867–1918). By sampling the extant fonds in eight county branches of the National Archives of Romania and complementing them with the perusal of the local press and with evidence culled from ego-documents, I have pieced together a coherent picture about the patterns of the official use of Hungarian vs. the non-dominant languages, about the factors influencing these patterns and about the gradual expansion of Hungarian. I will present my results against the benchmark of the 1868 Law of Nationalities and the linguistic rights set forth in it. The fact that later legislation eschewed such questions perpetuated the use of this document as a central reference for the contemporaries, an importance also bequeathed on historiographical treatments of the era. The central part of my work will be divided according to the contemporary domains of the official realm, covered section by section in the law: central government agencies, counties, local governments, the jurisdiction, civil-society documents and notarial acts. Each chapter will be concluded with a comparison with international trends. In addition, an introductory chapter will summarize the expectations, beliefs and historical visions in the background of policy designs and implementations.

The project examines immunization through the figure of Charlie Chaplin, which dominated early-Soviet discourses on cinema as a means of promoting healthy work culture for the proletariat. Like vaccination, which was an important tool of managing the masses in a country where health was rapidly re-conceptualised as a state concern, cinema was expected to play an important role in moulding the Soviet worker. The purpose of the project is to explore the theoretical potential of vaccination and immunity, which were employed in literature and film theory of the first decade after the Russian revolution to construct film as a kinaesthetic tool of labour education. Through this apparatus, Chaplin became an unlikely agent of “labour vaccination.” Methodologically, the project is inspired by a relatively recent turn towards the history of biosciences in literary studies and film studies. I argue that Chaplin’s position in Soviet culture acquires unique theoretical significance when seen in conjunction with theories that advocate cinema as a tool of ideological vaccination capable of transmitting knowledge about bodily efficiency and labour optimization. Through an interdisciplinary approach my book and accompanying articles will uncover a largely neglected area of Soviet film and cultural history, showing how earlier constructions of vaccination helps us reconsider current discourses of bio-cultural contagion.

This project is about discovery of natural history by the educated residents, petty nobility and gentry ( szlachta), in the Volhynian and Podolian provinces of the Russian empire in the late 18th – first third of the 19th century. Following the incorporation of these lands into the administrative structure of the empire, local amateurs unveiled their interest and contemplated the necessity to study the natural world of their provinces. In order to do so, they turned to the well-known works on natural history by the French, German, and Swedish scientists. However, Volhynian and Podolian provincial botanists not only appropriated foreign knowledge but also laid emphasis on promulgation of local natural novelties for the benefit of the world, an emphasis they believed necessary given the social and political reality of their region – the annexation, Napoleon’s presence, and continuous military upheavals.Through discussing practices and agendas of local naturalists in the most western provinces of the Russian empire, the project tackles the problem of (un)equal distribution of knowledge, the problem of the transfer of ideas and their cultural (dis)placement in the long 18th – first third of the 19th century. Examination of scientific pursuits in the Polish provinces also exposes the many (re)presentations of the global Enlightenment in Eastern Europe, uncovering the regional dynamics of this movement through the lens of natural history and science.

This is an interdisciplinary study. By bringing together legal, literary and documentary sources it explores the impact of oaths on Byzantine religious, social, cultural and political history. It compares the views of Byzantine patristic authors and canonists about oath to the ideas of Western European theologians. It investigates the treatment of oath in Byzantine civil law and explores the information court decisions and oath rituals provide about social relations in Byzantium and issues such as the status of women. It discusses the use of oaths as means to promote imperial policies and how oath ceremonies reflect intercultural exchanges between Byzantium and its neighbors. A significant part of my research deals with the analysis of Byzantine concepts about conspiracies and perjury. Although the oath is a central institution for the establishment of a community and played a fundamental role in Byzantine state organization and social structures, it has not attracted sufficient attention by modern scholarship. A small number of studies in the form of articles have shed light into the use of oaths as means to stabilize imperial authority. My aim is to complete this study as a monograph by early 2022.

The project will examine the dependencies in the triangle of bilateral relations between the Ottomans, the Safavids, and the Habsburgs. The series of Ottoman-Safavid wars in the extremely vibrant period of the late 16th c. and early 17th c. temporarily hindered the military activity of the Porte in the Mediterranean and Central Europe. They were hence beneficial for both branches of the Habsburg dynasty – prime antagonists of the Ottoman advance to the West. Furthermore, the perception of the Ottomans as a common enemy lead to several ambitious plans for cooperation and anti-ottoman alliances.The project will explore how the Imperial court in Vienna/Prague understood the Ottoman-Safavid rivalry and tried to take advantage of it. By examining written sources, produced by the Habsburg court and its diplomatic network, the research will aim at outlining the degree of acquaintance with different aspects of the manifold bilateral relations between the two Muslim states. Due to the lack of permanent contacts between the Emperor and the Shah, it was the Habsburg intelligence in Istanbul that regularly provided Vienna/Prague with the latest information regarding the developments in the Ottoman-Safavid relations. The poorly studied crucial practices of collecting and delivering information and its vital importance for the decision-making process will come to light.