Dr A.J. Drace-Francis received a BA degree in English and American Studies at the University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK (1992), and an MA degree in South-East European Studies at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, London (1996). With the aid of a British Academy research studentship, he studied for a PhD at SSEES, awarded in 2001 with a thesis on Romanian cultural development and national identity in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, subsequently published as The Making of Modern Romanian Culture (2006). He then worked as postdoctoral fellow on the project East Looks West: East European Travel Writing on European Identities and Divisions, 1600-2000, which he combined with a lectureship in Romanian Studies (2000-2003) and a Modern Humanities Research Association fellowship (2003-2004). In 2005, Dr Drace-Francis was appointed to the post of Lecturer in Modern European History at the University of Liverpool, UK.
Research interests and contribution to CAS ROH Project
Life-narratives, although they exist in large numbers and are regularly used as sources, have rarely been subject to systematic analysis by historians of the Balkans: I hope to establish the importance of this field of study through a monographic work focused on Romanian life histories from the period 1880-1945. I also aim to show how autobiographies relate to other genres, such as more formal historiography but also fiction and travel narratives, in a way, which could produce fresh perspectives on whole areas of the study of identity-construction in Southeastern Europe.
One particular area of fascination has been the application of Orientalism-derived theories that posit a ‘split’ or ‘stigmatic’ identity as a characteristic of the Balkans. While fragmented identities may at first sight seem metonymic of a broader Balkan complex vis-à-vis the West (the Romanian case was theorised by numerous authors in the 1980s), a more nuanced study of autobiographical narratives may suggest different models. In Middle Eastern studies, for instance, historians have identified traditions of self-narration which are relatively independent of Western models and need not depend on notions of the ‘fragment’, ‘mimic’ or ‘shadow’. This project represents a significant new research direction for me, building on my earlier work on the historical sociology and intellectual history of Romanian and Balkan culture, identity and alterity.
On a general level, and in tune with the lines of investigation laid down in the CAS call, autobiographies and personal narratives enable the elucidation not just of historical thought or historiographical trends, but also cross-fertilisation into fields just as anthropology, sociology, literary studies, both as objects of study and as primary sources for the history thereof. Like travel texts, they also provide a useful site for the investigation of ideas of rupture, continuity and crisis in a given society, as well as for understanding processes of self-and boundary formation within and between cultures. As such, I hope they can be of prime interest to a project concerned with the making of historical and spatial cultures in comparative context.