BrainMap

Luminita Dumanescu

PhD

Researcher - UNIVERSITATEA BABES BOLYAI

Researcher | Teaching staff | PhD supervisor

Senior researcher in social history, PhD supervisor in fields like family history, databases, Romanian modern history. I have published 5 books as main author, on family and childhood history and I co-authored a book about Romanian demography after 1945 (together with Traian Rotariu and Mihaela Haragus, Polirom, 2017).

Expertise & keywords

From parish registers to digital infrastructures: the development a HTR solution for automatic transcription of civil status church books Call name: P 5.1 - Proiecte de Cercetare Exploratorie - Competiția 2023
PN-IV-P1-PCE-2023-0339 2025 - 2027

Role in this project:

Coordinating institution: UNIVERSITATEA BABES BOLYAI

Project partners: UNIVERSITATEA BABES BOLYAI (RO)

Affiliation:

Project website: https://htr-hpdt.granturi.ubbcluj.ro/

Abstract:

The overall goal of the present project is to develop a cost- and time-effective solution for the transcription, integration, and subsequent usage of historical population sources with a regular tabular structure. The key element in this endeavor is the development of a sustainable and robust instrument capable of providing automatic handwritten text recognition (HTR) of parish records and censuses from the modern era.

The methodological underpinnings of the project will adhere to the best practices in the field, upholding the standards of reproducibility, transparency, and accessibility. Machine learning algorithms enabling HTR of Romanian, Hungarian, German, and Latin tabular documents written in either Latin, Cyrillic or Kurrentschrift will be trained within the framework of extant commercially developed tools ( Transkribus), while customized proprietary solutions will be developed in parallel, for certain specific aspects which go beyond the capabilities of current instruments (i.e. vertical text, untypical overlaps between text and columns, etc.). The present project will demonstrate measurable impact foremost in the fields of historical demography and digital humanities, by providing standards, best practices, and typical workflows for HTR for historical population sources. It will also redefine the parameters of public engagement for such scholarly endeavors by providing a publicly accessible, transparent, and highly advanced platform for HTR.

Raising the Nation: Institutional and Grassroots Initiatives for Orphan Welfare in Transylvania during Dualism Call name: P 1 - SP 1.1 - Proiecte de cercetare pentru stimularea tinerelor echipe independente
PN-III-P1-1.1-TE-2019-0472 2020 - 2022

Role in this project:

Coordinating institution: UNIVERSITATEA BABES BOLYAI

Project partners: UNIVERSITATEA BABES BOLYAI (RO)

Affiliation: UNIVERSITATEA BABES BOLYAI (RO)

Project website: http://nation-building-transylvania.ro/

Abstract:

During the 19th and early 20th centuries, the concurrent nation-building efforts of the nationalities inhabiting the Dual Monarchy transgressed the boundaries of cultural and political activism and insinuated themselves into the sphere of the family. Not only was the nation a priority, hence the efforts to build it politically, economically, and socially, but it was also the sum of its individuals: who more in need of aid to grow into good Romanians, Transylvanian Saxons, or Hungarians, than orphans? Private scholarship foundations, confessional or cultural associations, women’s reunions, or even informal groups, loosely organized around certain leading figures or national gazettes, joined in their efforts to literally and figuratively raise the nation. Children in general, and orphans in particular, would come into focus as the perfect locus of intervention and the nexus of future national revival. Starting from these premises, the present project aims to a. unravel the complex legislative and institutional underpinnings of the orphan welfare system developed in Dualist Hungary, focusing on the counties of historical Transylvania (i.e. without the Banat and Partium) during Dualism and prior to the First World War; b. reconstitute the historical experience of orphans, regardless of their social-economic, national, or confessional backgrounds, as subjects in their own narratives, possessed of agency; c. integrate the quantitative and qualitative dimensions of orphan welfare in Transylvania, by adapting and making use of already extant digital infrastructures of social and population history (the Probate Database of Transylvania, the Historical Population Database of Transylvania, and the Historical Data Grinder). Given the project’s inclusive approach, the recovery of Transylvanian orphans’ fates will serve as a high point from which new vistas of trans-national and trans-confessional social history of modern Transylvania can reveal themselves.

Social and professional trajectories in concurrent confessional spaces: Transylvania (1850 – 1918) Call name: P 4 - Proiecte de Cercetare Exploratorie
PN-III-P4-ID-PCE-2016-0661 2017 - 2019

Role in this project:

Coordinating institution: UNIVERSITATEA BABES BOLYAI

Project partners: UNIVERSITATEA BABES BOLYAI (RO)

Affiliation: UNIVERSITATEA BABES BOLYAI (RO)

Project website: http://www.elite-research.eu/Socio-professional%20trajectories.html

Abstract:

Throughout modernity, the parish priests gradually assumed the role of intercessor between communities (parishes), ecclesiastical institutions, and state local and central level administration. In ethnically and confessionally heterogeneous regions, such as Transylvania, the parish priests not only shepherded their communities in a spiritual sense, but also took on the mantle of de-facto guides in the entangled web of nationalist movements and political affirmation. In the case of the Orthodox and Greek-Catholic denominations, dominant from a quantitative perspective during the 19th and 20th centuries, but whose adherents were politically-marginalized and wielded few mechanisms of influencing state policy, the middle clergy saw itself placed between the often competing interests and necessities of their respective churches, their (sometimes ethnically-mixed) communities, and the succeeding configurations of state power in Transylvania. The ways in which they responded to the challenges posed by these ambivalent settings should be regarded as function of their upbringing, family and social-economic background, education, and individual or group strategies.

The present project therefore aims to illuminate these characteristics, by conducting a systematic quantitative analysis of the middle clergy from the Orthodox archdiocese of Sibiu and the Greek-Catholic archdiocese of Blaj, between 1850 and 1918. By creating an-initially prosopographic database of middle clergy from these two dioceses and augmenting it with information regarding social-economic background, the kinship ties, social mobility and career trajectories, the project will examine to how the clergy’s characteristics, composition, and strategies enabled them to fare in these constantly-changing environments. By covering this wide gap in current Southeast European scholarship, the project will create a model for analysis that can be applied in other regions, or for other social-professional groups.

Rhythms and Patterns: The Quantitative Dimension of Family Life in Transylvania, 1850-1918 Call name: Projects for Young Research Teams - RUTE -2014 call
PN-II-RU-TE-2014-4-2208 2015 - 2017

Role in this project:

Coordinating institution: UNIVERSITATEA BABES BOLYAI

Project partners: UNIVERSITATEA BABES BOLYAI (RO)

Affiliation: UNIVERSITATEA BABES BOLYAI (RO)

Project website: http://csp.centre.ubbcluj.ro/Rypat/

Abstract:

The main goal of the project is the longitudinal analyse of the main demographical events which can be found in the parish register from Transylvania between 1850-1910. The new scientific requirements of the past couple of decades have imposed a change of perspective in the study of populations, shifting interest from the study of demographic regimes, of data aggregated strictly for longitudinal analysis, to research on the life course of people, based on micro-social level data. Life course refers to the route followed by individuals throughout their existence, to the events through which they pass: births, marriages, divorces, deaths, changes of occupation, migration. Demographic historians are showing an increased interest in this approach, focusing specifically on research methods based on micro-level data. Family reconstitution used to be considered the main traditional analytical tool for this purpose (Boonstra and Panhuysen 1988), but this stage has been overcome, and analytical tools have been developed so as to benefit from the entire wealth of information on the lives of individuals that is available to historians, marking the transition, in other words, to event history analysis. This entails, however, new requirements and demands as regards the manner of organizing the available data. Our data is HPDT, the historical population database of Transylvania, under development at Centre for population Studies.

Building Modern Identities in Transylvania. A Comparative Approach Call name: Exploratory Research Projects - PCE-2011 call
PN-II-ID-PCE-2011-3-0081 2011 - 2016

Role in this project:

Coordinating institution: Universitatea "Babeş-Bolyai"

Project partners: Universitatea "Babeş-Bolyai" (RO)

Affiliation:

Project website: http://hiphi.ubbcluj.ro/Identities

Abstract:

This project will analyse how modern identities were constructed in Transylvania in the 18th – 19th centuries. It will thoroughly analyse the way in which Transylvanian communities dialogise, polemise and build a common space for performing identitary discourses. In order to achieve this result, all the components that are involved in Transylvania’s identitary rebuilding will be systematically approached: the zonal identities of the province’s geographical and administrative subcomponents, the social identities of the nobiliary, confessional and urban elites, the confessional identities of the main religious communities, the ethnic solidarities pertaining to the peasant’s traditional mentality. The comparative approach seeks to examine the identitary discourses belonging to the three ethnic communities of modern Transylvania. Furthermore, the complex mechanisms that transform local micro-identities in order to include them in larger constructions (national identities, supranational political loyalties, European symbolic geographies) will be also scrutinised. The project’s team will be led by three senior researchers, specialised in modern history and members of the three main Transylvanian ethnic groups (Sorin Mitu, Judit Pál, Rudolf Gräf) and it will include young researchers who are familiar with Transylvania’s languages, historiographical traditions and multicultural characteristics.

Interethnic marriages: between an exercise of tolerance and a modern expression of indifference. 1895-2010 Call name: Exploratory Research Projects - PCE-2011 call
PN-II-ID-PCE-2011-3-0188 2011 - 2016

Role in this project:

Coordinating institution: Universitatea Babes-Bolyai

Project partners: Universitatea Babes-Bolyai (RO)

Affiliation:

Project website: http://centre.ubbcluj.ro/csp/mixedmarriage/

Abstract:

Belonging to an ethnic or religious community is an important element of human identity. In a multi-ethnic and multi-confessional area, this belonging has often determined an adversative and concurential reference to the "other", and numerous tensions and conflicts. This is the case of Transylvania, where for centuries numerous ethnic groups (Romanians as majority, Hungarians, Germans, Gypsies, Slovaks etc) and confessions (Orthodox, Greek-Catholic, Protestant, Roman-Catholic, Evangelic, Jewish) have been living together. Previous research on minorities in Transylvania has focused rather on divergences and conflicts among these ethnic and confessional groups. Beyond these aspects, most visible and spectacular, there is a space where members with different ethnic and confessional background cohabit: the marriage. The aim of this project is to study the mixed marriage, as a case study on Transylvania during 1895-2010, under its multiple facets: historical, demographical and sociological. The research methodology will comprise conducting interviews to construct family case histories; the reconstruction of quantitative/demographic dimension of intermarriage; the reconstruction of the historical, political, ideological and cultural context of this phenomenon, using sources such as texts of law, press, memoirs literature.

The Romanian Childhood during Communism Call name: Postdoctoral Research Projects - PD-2012 call
PN-II-RU-PD-2012-3-0019 2013 - 2015

Role in this project:

Coordinating institution: ACADEMIA ROMANA FILIALA CLUJ

Project partners: ACADEMIA ROMANA FILIALA CLUJ (RO)

Affiliation: ACADEMIA ROMANA FILIALA CLUJ (RO)

Project website: http://www.copilariaincomunism.com/

Abstract:

The Romanian Childhood under Communism is aiming to recreate the life and the role of children as social layer that was deeply involved in the process of creation of the new man, as imagined by communists. The project follows several coordinates: we start out from the description of the role played by children's organizations, following their social role, probing their psychological and sociological impact, their competition spirit and the outline of differences – as engines for the future selection and formation of party members –, we aim at reconstructing the childhood specific consumerism (including media addressed to children and the specific literature and games), passing on to recreational aspects – holidays in communism have an important role here, in the form of school camps – ending with the outline of the role of children in everyday social life – queuing may be also seen as a child specific activity. This implied, from the very beginning of the research, a dual structure in terms of organizations, structure and methods. Our objective is to get into the intimacy of the childhood of today’s adults; actually, this way we shall realize a history of childhood under communism by combining the oral history with the information found in documents. This way, as it can be seen from the work plan below, I shall combine the analyze of sources from libraries an and archives with interviews.

Call name: Premierea obtinerii atestatului de abilitare - Competitia 2015
PN-II-RU-ABIL-2015-2-0127 2015 -

Role in this project:

Coordinating institution: UNIVERSITATEA BABES BOLYAI

Project partners: UNIVERSITATEA BABES BOLYAI (RO)

Affiliation: UNIVERSITATEA BABES BOLYAI (RO)

Project website:

Abstract:

Historical Population Database of Transylvania 1850-1914 Call name: EEA Research Programme under EEA Financial Mechanism 2009-2014
EEA-JRP-RO-NO-2013-1-0028 2013 -

Role in this project:

Coordinating institution: UNIVERSITATEA BABES BOLYAI

Project partners: UNIVERSITATEA BABES BOLYAI (RO); Norwegian Historical Data Centre, University of Tromsø (NO)

Affiliation: UNIVERSITATEA BABES BOLYAI (RO)

Project website:

Abstract:

The main aim of the Historical Population Database of Transylvania (HPDT) project is to build the first historical database of Transylvania’s population, covering the period 1850-1914 (from the first modern census to the limit of vital registration research allowed by Romanian Law). This will be carried out according to the most up-to-date methodological principles proposed in the field and will be fully compatible with the latest versions of the Intermediate Data Structure (IDS), allowing its connection to existing similar databases in Europe and North America. Considering the chronological and financial limitations, as well as the state of the sources, the project aims to cover 5-10% of the population of Transylvania during the period studied (ca. 5.4 million births) thus providing between 350,000-500,000 IDS-type individual records. The project is based on the collaboration between the Centre for Population Studies—Babeş-Bolyai University (CPS-BBU) and the Norwegian Historical Data Centre—University of Tromsø (NHDC-UT). The ensemble of activities will be carried out by the Romanian party, while the role of NHDC-UT will be to ensure the technical and methodological expertise in each of the project phases. As this is the first project of its kind in Romania, the expertise of the Norwegian party is absolutely necessary. The project was developed within the EEA Research Programmes, in the field of Social Sciences and Humanities, under the objectives: to stimulate interdisciplinary research, to increase the society’s capacity to cope with demographic change and cultural diversity, to strengthen capacity and human resources development.

The construction of HPDT aims to accomplish three major goals for Romanian research on population history: creating a pool of data that will allow more extensive and more complex analyses to be conducted than those currently under way; reconsidering the role of historical information on population and the socio-economic perspectives opened by the knowledge in the field; linking the research conducted on population in Romania to the current effort of reconstructing Europe’s population.

The envisaged project duration is 36 months, but the working plan is structured so as to allow the subsequent continuous development of the database. The activities will be structured into four workpackages: gathering and concentration of the necessary archival material; data entry and database building; promotion and dissemination of the results; overall project management. The first two workpackages also include an important component of methodological development, necessary in the context in which this initiative represents an absolute novelty for Transylvania and Romania.

The methodology for circumscribing the geographical areas of interest is constructed so as to enable longitudinal analyses at the individual, family and community levels, coupled with their cross-sectional correlation at the micro-area level. At the same time, the selection of the localities will seek to maintain a balance between the different ethnic and confessional spaces of Transylvania (Romanian, Hungarian, Saxon, Roma), so much so that the 5-10% of the total population entered into the database will represent a valid sample for the entire province.

The project results and their applications will have an impact both in the scientific (the university education system, research) and in the socio-economic environments (market applications, public policies in the medical and family fields). Its main end-product, the database may be expanded later chronologically, geographically and information-wise, so as to cover as large a population sample as possible and to enable more complex analyses than the initial ones. Besides the value of its content, HPDT will represent a benchmark of excellence and good practices, encouraging the development of similar initiatives at the national or regional level and supporting them with analogies and expertise.

FILE DESCRIPTION	DOCUMENT
List of research grants as project coordinator	Download (192.25 kb) 17/05/2016
List of research grants as partner team leader
List of research grants as project coordinator or partner team leader
Significant R&D projects for enterprises, as project manager
R&D activities in enterprises
Peer-review activity for international programs/projects