Individual projects

My project aims at investigating the contribution of cartography to processes of regionalization across Europe in early modern times. From the Renaissance through to the enlightenment, maps played a crucial role in shaping “regional” imaginaries, while at the same time they became a tool in support of emergent techniques of early modern state power. Capable of visualizing existing geographical areas, maps could also quickly reflect the constitution of new political or administrative regions. However, due to the codification of geographical literary genres and to iterative processes nurturing the print industry, cartographical framings remained a distinctive – and, I would say, conservative – feature in an otherwise vertiginously increasing and dynamic production. In this view, the introduction of new framings – intended to define a specific geographical area – acquires great historical significance and warrants attention. At the same time, “traditional” or established framings should also be re-considered as the outcome of multiple negotiations between alternative, and often incommensurate, geographical models. For many European regions, “families” of maps stemmed out from a first archetype and achieved success, while other solutions were quickly abandoned. The contents of the cartouches identified the depicted areas as unitary regions, legitimating a fragmentation of the territory, which did not necessarily correspond to their political or administrative status.

Through a “genealogic” study of framings, my project aims at detecting the crucial representative turns in the early modern cartographical history of a large-scale area stretching from the Eastern Baltic Sea to the Balkan peninsula. This area is one of the most challenging and interesting in terms of cartographical representation. The reason is simple: overlapping regional divisions, which are shifting throughout time, a continental separation between Europe and Asia is implied in the marking of the borders of these regions. The importance of such separation – one the few features of the medieval imago mundi inherited by modern cartography – becomes critical here, as no clear physical boundaries stand out as in the other continental divisions. The competition and coexistence of alternative regional definitions, as well as corresponding cartographical framings, will be the object of the research, which is intended to bring to light the contribution of maps to processes of both internal and external regionalization.

The tragic situation of the Jewish population in the Pale of Settlement during the First World War has been the subject of investigations by generations of historians. The aim of the present project is to research a yet unexplored page of this history: Russian literary and press responses to Polish-Jewish tensions during the first year of the War as a testing ground for issues that would engage the Russian and European consciousness throughout the long twentieth century: the imperial-national dichotomy, ethnic conflicts, the status of minority within a minority, literature and ideological mobilization. The study examines the Polish-Jewish tensions (1) along the vectors of an imperial versus national dichotomy, taking into account the ambivalence of both points of view and their frequent overlapping; it shall also engage with (2) ethnic conflict theory. As a result, the project can not only shed new light on its main empirical subject but can also contribute to the more general area of humanities and social studies by proposing a new approach to the study of ethnic conflicts and the empire-nationalism dichotomy in the twentieth century.

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, in Bulgaria there has been no collective research aimed at historicising the art practices from the time of the communist rule. We should not disregard certain articles and parts of exhibitions though. The 1980s, a period of significant changes and new practices, enjoys a great interest. However, the critical attempts seem to have been insufficient for the formation of an understanding in connection with the 1960s and the 1970s.
At that time the situation in South Eastern Europe showed considerable differences. The art contacts as well as the wider milieu of art practices had their specifics in each country. There were differences in the so-called "socialist camp" too; the comparison of the artistic exchange, the events and practices in Poland, Hungary, East Germany and Bulgaria, for example, point in that direction.

The issues of mutual artistic influences and the places and means of their happening - international exhibitions, critical, historical and theoretical texts (either in the original or translated), "travelling" reproductions of art works, long-lasting or short-lived international art milieus - today are the focus of attention of researchers from various fields.

From today's perspective, the (non-)happening of artistic contacts during the period of the "Cold War" in Bulgaria and elsewhere seems crucial to me for the interpretation of artistic works and practices before 1989.

In the present research on the view from Bulgaria to Western European and American art in the 1960s I suggest considering the artistic contacts - realised or missing - in two aspects: through the publications mainly in "Iskustvo" [Art] periodical - an important official institution of the artistic life, and from the perspective of the artists whose personal practice differs in some respects from the practices modelled by the official institutions. The publications in "Art" magazine, which will be a focus of attention, provide not only information for the artistic events in our country and elsewhere but also a possibility for understanding the officially regulated and built culture topography. I will try to imagine and discuss the position of these artists by reading and analysing interviews and articles in which they themselves mention impressions from and influences of foreign art, as well as researching personal archives, even though with the necessary adjustments to this testimonial discourse.

The overall aim of my project is to follow after and investigate changes in the field of Literature, Creative literacy and Literary policy. These all underwent deep cultural cuts which led to a deep cultural change. Nothing was left un-turned un-touched and all came undone.

Мethodologically this is going to be an interdisciplinary undertaking; a project of a personal account and a scholarly research of a vast historical change. Bulgarian Samizdat, Literaturen vestnik, and The Programmes of Creative Writing at Sofia University, those are the three main points of interest. That is how the project plans to look from a close range at the real picture of new Literary reading and writing practices built up and scattered across publicly.

The interdisciplinary method of research will open, I hope, a new perspective in gathering specific knowledge about Literature and its social and cultural production.

Her current post-doctoral project, entitled “Cities against the Iron Curtain? Western relations of Hungarian and Bulgarian towns and departments in the Cold War”, is an extension of her thesis, and strengthens the focus of research on the international, national and local embeddedness of cultural and economic contacts that were inscribed into the overarching East-West dialogue. She argues that the involvement of the governments of Hungary and Bulgaria in the promotion of universal détente, along with the decentralization that was launched in Hungary at the end of the 1960s, which had no equivalent within the Soviet Bloc, created a “free space” for local councils that enabled them to implement actions with propagandistic, commercial or symbolical ends. The councils engaged, despite the ideological constraints weighing on them, in a soft emancipation, which was tolerated and even encouraged by the state for economic and financial reasons. This was a learning process for both sides, which nevertheless created a vicious circle, as the intensifying cooperation with Western local and regional authorities meant a pressure on the central apparatus, since it progressively called the prevailing ideological justifications and interpretations into question. She is particularly keen to develop her research perspective on bilateral and regional city cooperation networks by putting them into a European and a global framework.

The main purpose of this project is to study the social, fiscal and administrative status of the Slavs living within the Byzantine Empire from 6th to 10th c. The research will focus on two major points: a) the status of the Slavic communities in the southern Balkans, and b) the status of the Slavic population transferred to Asia Minor from the Balkans. 

Thanks to the sigillographic material, we know that the Slavs who settled within the Balkan borders of the Empire were not independent, but organized in communities, under the supervision of a Byzantine official. These communities were financially subject to the local imperial kommerkia. The Slavs that were transferred and installed by the Emperors in Asia Minor, though, had a different status: although they also formed communities – and this is (perhaps) how one should interpret the scanty information provided by written sources – apparently their fiscal status was much different than that of the Balkan Slavs, and this can be confirmed from evidence of the sigillographic material. A comparison of these communities will cast some light on Byzantium’s policy towards the newcomers as subjects.

The project is based mainly on the so called Translation turn, which is part of a wider discourse on cultural translation. The study is concerned with models of representation, connected with both historical research and cultural diplomacy theories. It juxtaposes the translation approach with the political and diplomatic problems of the Habsburg-Ottoman relations in the 16th-18th century.

Not only in the Early Modern period, but even today there is a close connection between language, politics, and culture, since interests and claims had to be verbalized during peace negotiations and discussions. Finding a common in the framework within the limits of international law and developing standards and terms among Christian and European powers proved to be a major challenge, but it was much more difficult to make this within Inter-Religious and Intercultural spaces, as was the case with the Ottomans.

My project studies the history of war crime tribunals, established in Bulgaria after the First Word War, to trial alleged wrongdoings, committed by Bulgarian authorities against foreign nationals, both in the occupied territories and on Bulgarian soil. The project aims to fill the vacuum within the fields of Bulgarian history, European history of post-WWI order, and international history of the prosecution of war crimes, and to integrate the Bulgarian case within the broader European and global perspective. It will be based mainly upon original archival material not used by other scholars to this date. Apart from the "hard facts" the project presents a novel methodological approach to a subject that is traditionally treated only in the framework of legal and diplomatic history, and I hope it will contribute to a better understanding of military violence in the modern world.