Individual projects

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.

This project investigates the gender wage gap in Bulgarian industry during the first half of the twentieth century. The study examines the evolution of wage differentials between men and women in industrial employment, exploring the factors that contributed to the convergence of their wages over time. Drawing on extensive statistical data, archival and printed materials the project analyses how wars, economic shifts, technological changes, and political transformations influenced gender wage disparities. It also addresses the evolving discourse around gender wage justice and equal pay, considering the role of labour and social movements, collective agreements, state policies, and international labour standards. The project’s approach combines quantitative methods with historical analysis, shedding light on both the economic and social aspects of the gendered history of wages during a critical period in Bulgarian history. By focusing on a relatively underexplored intersection of labour history and women’s history in Bulgaria, this research aims to contribute to a deeper understanding of the gendered nature of industrial labour, the political, economic, and social forces that shaped the labour market and the role of women in  it.

The proposed research project aims at exploring the ways in which nature in urban settings has been constructed as wild for the purpose of its’ protection in the case of two post-socialist cities in Southeastern Europe. Contemporary environmental discourse increasingly recognizes nature as an equal partner to the built environment in fostering climate-adaptive and ecologically sustainable urban settlements. Focusing on Sofia and Bucharest, the research critically assess the processes of “renaturalisation” and “rewilding” of the urban. The Boyana Marsh in Sofia, a natural wetland under pressure from private development, and Văcărești Nature Park in Bucharest, a wetland emerging from an abandoned socialist-era artificial lake project, share distinct physical histories yet have converging meanings as unique urban wildlands in the city, important for sustainable development and refuge for non-human species. The study is using critical cultural and urban studies approaches, such as oral history and discourse analysis to challenge the dominant narrative of “wild” post-socialist cities. It situates these processes within the broader context of Bulgaria's and Romania’s socialist legacies and their transitions to market economies and  democratic governance. The study hypothesizes that examining these cases jointly can reveal how discourses of climate change shape contemporary urban nature's construction and contestation.

The delegitimisation of foreign rulers plays a central role in Neo-Assyrian propaganda. In Assyrian texts, foreign rulers were characterised as blood-thirsty villains, who even killed their closest relatives, and as treaty-breakers, who ignored the warnings of gods and wise people. Thereby, the Assyrians had to intervene to restore a just world order. Even after defeating their enemies, the Assyrian propaganda continued ridiculing the foreign rulers. While the justification of the expansionistic policy of the Neo-Assyrian Empire (934–609 B.C.) has been studied in detail, no detailed study of the description and delegitimisation of foreign rulers has been conducted so far. The project will study the Neo-Assyrian narratives about and representations of foreign rulers and their authority. The research on Neo-Assyrian strategies of delegitimisation not only contributes to the field of Ancient Near Eastern Studies, but also to the fields of empire studies, political sciences, studies on propaganda, and the current discussion on hybrid warfare.

This study explores the impact of Goethean morphology and plant thinking on Central and East European thought between 1917 and 1968. Using a comparative and interdisciplinary lens, it investigates how morphology, sidelined by Marxist-Leninist dogma, shaped discourses on expression, embodiment, organicism, and posthumanist ontologies, offering an alternative to both Western structuralism and Soviet dialectical materialism. It challenges established narratives, such as the canonisation of Russian formalism, by highlighting the contributions of Ukrainian and Czechoslovak theorists like Volodymyr Koryak, Jan Mukařovský, Vladimir Skalička, and Vilém Mathesius. Introducing ‘morphological materialism’ as a counterpoint to dialectical materialism, the study offers new readings of Soviet theorists such as Vladimir Vernadsky, Lev Vygotsky, and Evald Ilyenkov. It also reassesses the role of Czechoslovak phenomenology and philosophy of science, focusing on thinkers like Emanuel Rádl, Václav Příhoda, and Jan Patočka. By uncovering the dynamic interplay between morphology, philosophy, and politics, the study reveals a lost intellectual tradition that shaped conceptions of form, agency, and scientific knowledge in the region. Ultimately, it reasserts the relevance of morphology as a philosophical paradigm that can bridge the humanities, arts, and sciences, offering critical insights into contemporary debates on technology, ecology, and more-than-human entanglements.