BrainMap

Nicoleta-Maria Hegedus

- UNIVERSITATEA BABES BOLYAI

Researcher

Expertise & keywords

Romanians about Hungarians, Hungarians about Romanians: Two Centuries of Mutual Mirroring (1789-2007) Call name: P 4 - Proiecte de cercetare exploratorie - PCE-2021
PN-III-P4-PCE-2021-0262 2022 - 2024

Role in this project:

Coordinating institution: UNIVERSITATEA BABES BOLYAI

Project partners: UNIVERSITATEA BABES BOLYAI (RO)

Affiliation:

Project website: https://6343e07228348.site123.me/

Abstract:

Romanians and Hungarians form one of the most important imagological couples of the European continent. However, an integrated, comparative and transnational approach of the reciprocal Romanian-Hungarian images is still absent in the topic’s bibliography. The present project has two major objectives. The first one is represented by the study of the mutual Romanian-Hungarian images prevalent in these groups over a long timespan, namely throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, that is to say in the period of their formation, development and maturation. We will consider the entire evolution and all the transformations suffered by these images in the specific context of each historical period, so that in the end we will be able to provide a complete history of the Romanian-Hungarian imagological dynamics between 1699 and 1918, because, as of yet, this topic has not been tackled from an overall perspective. Secondly, the project aims to analyse this complex issue by bearing in mind all its connections and ramifications Romanians’ self-image; Hungarians’ self-image; Romanians’ image of the Hungarians; Hungarians’ image of the Romanians. As a result, we will tackle all these four topics over a period of two hundred years. But the project’s chief stake is not represented by a separate analysis of each of these four images. What we intend to reveal is the complex way in which these images have influenced each other, evolved together, confronted and blended.

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.

The Encyclopedia of Romanian Imaginaries. Historical Patrimony and Cultural-Linguistic Identities Call name: P 1 - SP 1.2 - Proiecte complexe realizate in consorții CDI
PN-III-P1-1.2-PCCDI-2017-0326 2018 - 2021

Role in this project:

Coordinating institution: UNIVERSITATEA BABES BOLYAI

Project partners: UNIVERSITATEA BABES BOLYAI (RO); ACADEMIA ROMANA FILIALA CLUJ (RO); UNIVERSITATEA NATIONALA DE ARTE DIN BUCURESTI (RO)

Affiliation: ACADEMIA ROMANA FILIALA CLUJ (RO)

Project website: http://romimag.granturi.ubbcluj.ro/

Abstract:

The project The Encyclopedia of Romanian Imaginaries. Historical Patrimony and Cultural-Linguistic Identities (ROMIMAG) aims to produce a knowledge base and a five-volume Encyclopaedia, providing a synoptic perspective on the cultural inheritance and spiritual identities of Romania. However, it would be impossible to tackle cultural identities without a thorough analysis of the collective imagination. Guided by the powerful and innovative concept of social and cultural imaginaries, along with other key concepts such as semantic basin, linguistic field, constellations of images, fractal identity, ROMIMAG will use multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary methodologies for analyzing the main domains of Romanian collective representations. It will feature 5 scientific work packages, covering the following fields: Romania’s Linguistic Patrimony; Literary Imaginaries; Historical Representations; Religious Imaginaries; Artistic Imaginaries and Patrimony. Within a two-year calendar, each work package will feature about 20 contributors, who will produce 20 articles presenting the main cultural basins covered by their volume, and 2 patents. This database will be published online (an interactive site, designed as an “electronic hive”) and in print (a five-volume Encyclopedia, published by Polirom, Iași). ROMIMAG targets different categories of public: educated (writers, artists, musicians, theatre and movie directors, linguists, editors, media specialists, curators), broad (pupils, students, general readership) and institutional (media studios, advertising and tourism companies, leaders and policy makers from the administration and governance levels). This panoramic image of the cultural and spiritual patrimony of Romania will offer, within the frame of European interculturalism, a better understanding of national, but also of local and group identities, which could prevent latent tensions and social violence from erupting and allow the configuration of a collaborative climate.

Romanian Officers in the Habsburg Army and their Involvement in Civil Society (late 18th century to 1918) Call name: P 1 - SP 1.1 - Proiecte de cercetare pentru stimularea tinerelor echipe independente
PN-III-P1-1.1-TE-2016-0432 2018 - 2020

Role in this project: Key expert

Coordinating institution: UNIVERSITATEA BABES BOLYAI

Project partners: UNIVERSITATEA BABES BOLYAI (RO)

Affiliation: UNIVERSITATEA BABES BOLYAI (RO)

Project website: http://istoriagranitei.ro/wp/proiecte/rohacs/

Abstract:

Our project aims to study the involvement of the Romanian officers (active, retired or reserve) and their wives in the establishment and activity of the civil society in the Habsburg Empire. Although the association might seem unusual, given the military restrictions and the officers’ ethos – characterized by a deeply ingrained imperial loyalism, being on active duty was not as incompatible as might have appeared with supporting civic initiatives. Furthermore, among reserve and retired officers, and among officers’ wives such incompatibility was almost absent. The officers’ engagement with civil society institutions and activities underlines, depending on the circumstances, either a civic/patriotic manifestation of imperial loyalism, or the attachment to a national (maybe even political) ideal. This involvement gradually intensified after 1867, partly as an effect of the structural changes within the officers’ corps (a higher share of those with bourgeois origin and civil higher education background), partly as a result of the institutional flourishing of the civil society. Besides, the officers seem to have represented, in this field too, a trans-ethnic binder for the Empire, given that their civic/patriotic initiatives and involvement sometimes surpassed the boundaries of national associative entities. Behind such acts one can also glimpse at the social networks that often seem to spur and support their engagement, be it purely civic/patriotic or wearing a nationalist coat. As neither the history of the civil society from Transylvania and Hungary, nor that of the Romanian k.u.k. officers’ corps have been systematically studied, the overlapping of these two research areas has the potential to bring up significant knowledge, to propose new concepts and methodological approaches within Romanian historical research, and to link the latter with the New Military History of the Habsburg territories.

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.

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.

FILE DESCRIPTION	DOCUMENT
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