Individual projects

The project’s overarching aim is to problematize the concept of (Central) Europe in a transregional, global perspective, in relation to (Latin) America and Russia, Asia through the phenomenological prism of individual experiences of travel and life in exile (self in the mirror of other). The research distances from the widely spread in the scholarship geopolitical approach to East-Central Europe founded on region-building ideas and identity politics. The emphasis is put on geopoetics and literary self-identifications of several Central European writers (Czesław Miłosz, Andrzej Bobkowski, Joseph Roth, Alma Karlin) reshaped in relation to changeable places, cultures and plural temporalities. Drawing on interdisciplinary area of sensory studies the project addresses the writers’ changeable “grammars of identity/alterity” nourished by emotional responses to various instances of Eastern and Western otherness. The geopoetic approach traced in egodocuments re-evaluates the region’s dominant geopolitical conceptualizations structured along the horizontal axis which trapped the Slavic nations in an unfavourable position of in-betweenness forcing on them the complex of inferiority in the face of more civilized West and greater imperial East. The geopoetic transregional horizon sheds a new light on East-Central Europe as an array of sensory topographies stretched from North to South and placed in a global framework.

This project analyzes the ubiquitous narratives and experiences about ghosts and treasures in contemporary Paraguay as folk memories of past violence and war. Such haunting spirits and buried riches are said to be results of the War of the Triple Alliance (1864-1870), which killed at least half of Paraguay’s prewar population and during which its wealthy citizens buried their valuables to prevent looting by foreign invaders. Today, Paraguay is full of stories of encounters with distressed wartime ghosts and of people digging the land in search of underground treasures. Also, all Paraguayans are familiar with widespread tales of specters who scare the greedy away from those riches and who reveal their location to selected people deemed worthy of receiving them. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in 2022 and 2024-2025, this project interprets narratives and experiences about ghosts and treasures in Paraguay as vernacular memories that allow people to a) feel the past in the present through the senses of hearing, sight, and touch, and b) make moral sense of trauma and violence in ways that depart from official nationalistic, militaristic commemorations. Such sensory and moral histories offer messages of loss and recovery, of trauma and hope, to today’s war-torn world.

The project explores Buddhist-Christian interactions between Tibet, Italy, and Bulgaria by examining the depiction of the Wheel of Life (Skt. bhāvacakra; Tib. srid pa'i 'khor lo) in the Alphabetum Tibetanum (1762) and its possible influence on Zahari Zograf’s mural at the Transfiguration Monastery (1849–1850). The Alphabetum Tibetanum, a comprehensive study of the Tibetan language and culture authored by the Italian Jesuit missionary and scholar Antonio Agostino Giorgi (1711–1797), contains one of the earliest European representations of the bhāvacakra. An engraving of the bhāvacakra from the Alphabetum Tibetanum became part of Zahari Zograf’s collection and is believed to have influenced the creation of the iconic Wheel of Life mural at the Transfiguration Monastery, a landmark in Bulgarian art. This research investigates the transmission of theological and visual motifs related to the Wheel of Life from its Tibetan origins through the Alphabetum Tibetanum to Eastern Orthodox Christian art, focusing on how Zograf’s mural may reflect Buddhist cosmological concepts. Through an interdisciplinary approach that combines historical, theological, and iconographical analysis with comparative study, the project examines the role of missionary scholarship and cross-cultural artistic exchanges in shaping religious iconography. By tracing these interactions, the study aims to provide new insights into the diffusion of Buddhist imagery within Christian contexts and the broader intellectual exchanges between Tibet, Catholic Europe, and Orthodox Bulgaria in the 18th and 19th centuries. Furthermore, by enhancing the understanding of Buddhist-Christian interactions in theology and art, the research will contribute to interreligious dialogue.

Debt and morality go hand in hand. The notion that ‘one has to repay one’s debts’ remains a part of common consciousness, as the failure to repay a debt is seen as dishonest. But even according to standard economic theory, the statement simply is not true. Lenders have always expected to undertake a certain amount of risk, knowing that default was a common feature of trade. Rather, the desire to ensure that people honour their commitments, fulfil their responsibilities, and complete their contracts can be seen as a moral judgement. How these judgements are made in relation to social and cultural norms — both in the past and in the present — remains unclear. This project will reveal the criteria used by early modern people to judge what they deemed to be respectable and credible actions when repaying debts on the one hand, and fraudulent and criminal activity on the other. Analysing the ways in which a broad range of individuals described, debated, and discussed the concept of indebtedness — across the colonial, revolutionary, and early republic period — will illuminate contemporary understandings of what was considered right and wrong, honourable and deceitful, and criminal and compassionate within the moral landscape of debt recovery.

This project develops a novel framework to examine how contemporary populist governments consolidate power by combining insights from patrimonialism, securitization, and post-truth politics. Drawing on insights from Weberian political sociology, critical security studies, and comparative politics research, the study explores the populist playbook of one of the longest serving populist leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, investigating the tools and mechanisms enabling him to maintain and expand its power over the last 23 years. The study illustrates how state institutions are repurposed as instruments of personal rule, where political legitimacy is rooted in loyalty rather than law. Through emotionally charged threat narratives and epistemic disorientation, dissent is securitized and opposition delegitimized. The result is not simply authoritarianism, but a thriving patrimonial regime that undermines institutional autonomy of state while maintaining a populist claim to represent the “real people.”

This research project investigates the constitution and everyday meanings of ‘charisma’ among Roma women, contributing to broader debates on the intersections of gender, leadership, and social change within Roma evangelical communities. Central to the study is the role of evangelical Christianity, one of the most widespread religions among marginalized populations, in shaping spiritual authority and community dynamics. The project aims to document and analyze diverse manifestations of female authority and to develop a nuanced understanding of ‘charisma’, particularly as it relates to expressions of modern spirituality and under-explored forms of religious experimenting. In the context of evangelicalism, ‘charisma’, as a perceived materialization of God’s grace, is deeply embedded in leadership dynamics. While often associated with male religious figures, this research highlights how ‘charisma’ is also expressed by women, both within Pentecostal and non-Pentecostal contexts. This is particularly distinctive in the Roma communities of Bulgaria, where academic scholarship on female charismatic leadership remains limited. The study uses both historical and ethnological approaches. To develop a comparative perspective, the project will analyze examples of female charismatic authority from Bulgaria and compare them with cases from Slovakia and Spain.

The ancient, medieval and the world of the pre-modern era are replete with objects, imagery created in different media, as well as architectural structures, which are not only bearers of religious significance but also points of divine manifestation, points of contact with the higher reality. This designates them as vessels, mediators and actors in the power play of political and important factors i.e. subjects of networks of connectivity. With this in mind, we can definitely state that Jewish presence and pertaining visual culture in the Balkans in the pre-modern era, from antiquity to the age of Sabbatei Sevi, plays a highly significant but to date inadequately and insufficiently studied phenomenon.Elements of Jewish visual culture to be examined as part of my project include funerary monuments and cemeteries, books, book production, illustration and circulation, synagogues and synagogal art and liturgical objects, textiles and clothing as markers of Jewish identity. Key points to be studied on the geopolitical map of the Jewish Balkans include such significant centers of Jewish life as Stobi, Plovdiv, Sofia, Thessaloniki, Ioannina, Bitola, Sarajevo, Niš, Belgrade and others.

The project aims to bring together institutional history of science and intellectual history using the case of Ukrainian historiography on both sides of the Iron Curtain during the Cold War. I will analyze the various forms of dialogue between Soviet and diaspora Ukrainian historiography in a transregional perspective. Special attention will be paid to such phenomena as Soviet Ukrainian patriotism, the internal diversity of both Soviet and Western Ukrainian historiography, tactics of coexistence and non-conformism with the official ideology, attempts to go beyond national history (in either the Soviet or nationalist version) and to establish Ukrainian-Jewish, Ukrainian-Polish, and Ukrainian-Russian dialogues. My project is based on unpublished and newly declassified archival sources (especially from the State Archive of the Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine), as well as a close reading of academic texts and memoirs written by American, Canadian, Polish, Russian, and Ukrainian scholars. This project is also motivated by the search for a new analytical language that could hopefully minimize the dangers and traps of both methodological nationalism and methodological imperialism, and help us to more adequately capture the complexity of social and cultural phenomena in Central and Eastern Europe.

Borders and border regions are currently experiencing a surge in research interest, a trend that becomes evident when examining the evolution of historiography on this subject over the past 150 years. Academic interest in the ‘phenomenon of borders’ has been significantly shaped by the major global conflicts of the 20th century. During the early modern period, the large Balkan region, dominated by the Ottoman Empire until the late 17th century, played a pivotal role in international relations. This research project aims to explore how the border between Europe and the Ottoman Empire was perceived and represented in the pre-modern era. It will focus on how the visualization and staging of the border within the European-Ottoman context evolved over time. A key aspect of this investigation is understanding how and why the Habsburg-Ottoman border area, which significantly reshaped Southeastern Europe geopolitically, was portrayed as a political reality. The visualization of the border could signify dominance over a vanquished adversary, or conversely, it might attempt to obscure the outcomes of a lost conflict. The creation and representation of borders on geographical and political maps could also reflect dynastic ambitions and aggressive expansionist strategies, which were intentionally communicated to the public of the time through print media. Furthermore, the visualization and conceptualization of the border played a crucial role in the political and diplomatic relations between Vienna and Constantinople. Interestingly, neither the Habsburgs nor the Ottomans had the capacity to assert radical power claims in Southeastern Europe since the 1730s, making ‘power-political symbolism’ vital for both sides. The portrayal of the border was undoubtedly a significant component of this symbolism.

This project aims to investigate the position of New Religious Movements (NRMs) within Bulgaria’s power-imbalanced religious field, with a focus on their public portrayal. I argue that, in a post-secular situation emphatically dominated by a single law-protected religion, examining those in a minority position is essential for critically assessing the prospects for pluralism of faiths. Globally, NRMs frequently encounter tension with both established religious institutions and prevailing social norms due to their unconventional spiritual practices and ways of living. Investigating their perceived otherness—often reinforced by negative media labelling and discursive stigmatisation by the dominant religious milieu—provides valuable insight into broader societal attitudes towards religious diversity and tolerance. Accordingly, the study examines how NRMs are portrayed within Orthodox and secular media discourse in Bulgaria, particularly through the use of derogatory labels such as ‘sect’ and ‘cult’, and how these practices of othering affect their subjects. Employing a qualitative approach, the research combines a multimodal analysis of public representations with participant observations and semi-structured interviews with followers of selected NRMs to explore their lived experiences from a comparative perspective. It also offers a theoretical contribution by developing an empirically grounded typology of otherness, shedding light on stratifications and boundaries within the local religious field.