Department: School of History, Philosophy and Religion
Present Appointment: Professor in Twentieth Century Central and Eastern European Biomedicine
Education and qualifications obtained: PhD in Intellectual History (2002); MA in Comparative History (1998); BA in History (1997).
Publications
Monographs
--Historicizing Race (2018) [co-author] (translated into Romanian in 2019)
-Latin Eugenics in Comparative Perspective (2015) [co-author]
-Eugenics and Nation in Early Twentieth Century Hungary (2015)
-Modernism and Eugenics (2010) (translated into Romanian in 2014 and into French
Eugenism si antropologie in Romania, 1874-1944 (Eugenics and Anthropology in Romania, 1874-1944) (2008)
-The Idea of National Superiority in Central Europe, 1880-1918 (2005) (translated into Romanian in 2015)
Edited Volumes [both as editor and as contributor]
- Identities in-Between in East-Central Europe (2020)
-Teleology and Modernity (2019)
-Religion, Evolution and Heredity (2018)
-The History of Eugenics in East-Central Europe, 1900-1944: Texts and Commentaries (2015; 2017)
-Anti-Modernism: Radical Revisions of Collective Identity (2014) [co-editor]
-Crafting Humans: From Genesis to Eugenics and beyond (2012)
- Health, Hygiene and Eugenics in Southeastern Europe to 1945 (2011) [co-editor]
- Re-Contextualising East Central European History: Nation, Culture and Minority Groups (2010) [co-editor]
-'Clerical Fascism' in Interwar Europe (2008; 2014) [co-editor]
-‘Blood and Homeland’: Eugenics and Racial Nationalism in Central and Southeast Europe, 1900-1940 (2007) [co-editor]
-The Garden and the Workshop: Disseminating Cultural Creativity in East-Central Europe (1999)
Exhibitions catalogues
Ştiinţă şi etnicitate II: Biopolitică si eugenism în România, 1920-1944/Science and Ethnicity II: Biopolitics and Eugenics in Romania, 1920-1944 (2019)
-Ştiinţă şi etnicitate I: Cercetarea antropologică în România anilor '30 (Science and Ethnicity: Anthropological Research in Romania during the 1930s) (2018)
Articles in Peer-Reviewed Journals
“Scientific Calvinism: Eugenics as a Secular Religion,” The Journal of Religious History, Literature and Culture 4, 1 (2018): 1-16
Unity in Diversity: Latin Eugenic Narratives in Europe, ca. 1910s-1930s,” Contemporanea 20, 1 (2017), 3-30
Romanian Eugenic Sub-Culture and the Allure of Biopolitics, 1918-1939,” Acta Poloniae Historica 114 (2016), 29-58
“Holocaust’s Textuality: Victims’ Narratives and Memoirs of Jewish Women Physicians,” Archiva Moldaviae 8 (2016), 69-82
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“Sub-Cultures and Narratives of Race in Hungary,” Cahiers d'études hongroises et finlandaises 21 (2014), 229-241
“The ambiguous victim: Miklós Nyiszli’s Narrative of Medical Experimentation in Auschwitz-Birkenau,” Historein 14, 1 (2014): 43-58
“In Search of Racial Types: Soldiers and the Anthropological Mapping of the Romanian Nation, 1914-1944,” Patterns of Prejudice 47, 1 (2013), 1-21
“In Pursuit of Greater Hungary: Eugenic Ideas of Social and Biological Improvement, 1940-1941,” The Journal of Modern History 85, 3 (2013), 558-591
"Entangled traditions of race: physical anthropology in Hungary and Romania, 1900-1940," Focaal 58, 3 (2010), 32-46
"Whither Race? Physical anthropology in post-1945 Central and Southeastern Europe," Focaal 58, 3 (2010), 3-15
“Focus on Austria and Germany,” Social History of Medicine 23, 2 (2010), 408-412
“'To End the Degeneration of a Nation': Debates on Eugenic Sterilization in Interwar Romania," Medical History 53, 1 (2009), 77-104
“The Biology of War: Eugenics in Hungary, 1914-1918,” Austrian History Yearbook 40, 1 (2009), 238-264
“Conservative Palingenesis and Cultural Modernism in Early Twentieth-Century Romania,” Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions 9, 4 (2008): 437-453
“Recent Scholarship on Race and Eugenics,” The Historical Journal 51, 4 (2008), 1115-1124
“Focus on Social History of Medicine in Central and Eastern Europe,” Social History of Medicine 21, 2 (2008), 395-401
“Politics, Religion, Gender and Historiography: Eastern European Perspectives,” Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions 9, 1 (2008), 129-136
“From Craniology to Serology: Racial Anthropology in Interwar Hungary and Romania,” Journal of the History of Behavioral Sciences 43, 3 (2007), 361-377
“Race, Politics and Nationalist Darwinism in Hungary, 1880-1918,” "Ab Imperio" Quarterly: Studies of New Imperial History and Nationalism in the Post-Soviet Space 1 (2007), 139-164
“The Nation as Object: Race, Blood and Biopolitics in Interwar Romania,” Slavic Review 66, 3 (2007), 413-441
“Heredity and Eugenic Thought in Early Twentieth-Century Hungary,” Orvostörténeti Közlemények 51, 1-2 (2007): 101-118
"‘Clerical Fascism’ in Interwar Europe: An Introduction,” Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions 8, 2 (2007): 205-212
“A New Religion: Eugenics and Racial Scientism in Pre-First World War Hungary," Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions 7, 3 (2006), 303-325
“New Perspectives on Romanian Fascism: Themes and Options,” Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, 6, 1 (2005): 143-150
“Faj és nemzet,” 2000. Irodalmi és Társadalmi havi lap, 16. évfolyam, 6. szám (2004), 57-67
“Fantasies of Degeneration: Some Remarks on Racial Antisemitism in Interwar Romania,” Studia Iudaica 3 (2003), 336-348
“‘The Magyars: A Ruling Race’: The Idea of National Superiority in Fin-De-Siècle Hungary,” European Review of History 10, 1 (2003): 5-23
“Europäische Integration vs. Frustration—ein Blick auf Rumänien heute,” Aktuelle Ostinformationen (Ereignisse und Entwicklungen) 1, 2 (2001): 45-48
“Politikai megbékélés versus történeti diskursus: az 1989-1999 közöti román történetírás Magyarország-percepciója,” Regio (Kisebbség, Politika, Tarsadalom) 11 (2000): 129-157
“Föderalismus und Rumänentum.” Für eine mögliche Archäologie der rumänischen föderativen Idee,” Aktuelle Ostinformationen 3-4 (1999): 67-70
“Aurel C. Popovici and the Symbolic Geography of the Romanians in the Late Habsburg Empire (1890–1910),” Revue Roumaine d'Histoire 1-2 (1997): 97-121
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Chapters in Collective volumes
“Teleology and Race,” in Dan O’Brien, William Gibson and Marius Turda, eds., Teleology and Modernity (2019)
“History of Medicine in Eastern Europe, including Russia,” in Mark Jackson, ed., A Global History of Medicine (2018), 96-117.
“Hungary,” in Marius Turda, ed., The History of Eugenics in East-Central Europe, 1900-1945: Texts and Commentaries (2015), 191-270
“Romania,” in Marius Turda, ed., The History of Eugenics in East-Central Europe, 1900-1945: Texts and Commentaries (2015), 271-361
“Eugenics as a Basis for Population Policy,” in James D. Wright (editor-in-chief), International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2nd edition, vol 8. (2015), 218-223
“History of Eugenics,” in James D. Wright (editor-in-chief), International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2nd edition, vol 8. (2015), 253–257
“Private and Public Traditions of Health Care in Central and South-eastern Europe, from the Nineteenth to the mid-Twentieth Centuries,” in Paul J. Weindling, ed., Healthcare in Private and Public from the Early Modern Period to 2000 (2015), 101-122
“Biology and Eugenics,” in Michael Saler, ed., The Fin-de-Siècle World (2015), 456-470
“Nowoczesność i eugeniczne projekty udoskonalenia człowieka,” in Anda Rottenberg, ed., Postęp i higiena (2014), 58-66
“Imagined Geographies of Race: Hungary and Romania, 1900-1940,” in Anders E. B. Blomqvist, Constantin Iordachi, Balázs Trencsényi, eds., Hungary and Romania Beyond National Narratives: Comparisons and Entanglements (2013), 293-319
“‘If Our Race did not Exist, it would have to be created’: Racial Sciences in Hungary, 1940-1944,” in Anton Weiss-Wendt, Rory Yeomans, eds., Racial Sciences in Hitler’s Europe, 1939-1945 (2013), 237-258
“Crafting a Healthy Nation: European Eugenics in Historical Context,” in Marius Turda, ed., Crafting Humans: From Genesis and Genetics and Beyond ( 2013), 109-126
“In Search of Racial Types: Soldiers and the Anthropological Mapping of the Romanian Nation, 1914-1944,” in Gavin Schaffer, ed., Racializing the Soldier (2013), pp. 130-150
“Nationalizing Eugenics: The Hungarian Public Debate of 1910-1911,” in Mitchell G. Ash and Jan Surman, eds., The Nationalization of Scientific Knowledge in the Habsburg Empire, 1848 - 1918 (2012), 183-208
“History of Medicine in Eastern Europe, including Russia," in Mark Jackson, ed, The Oxford Handbook of the History of Medicine (2011), 208-224
“Journeying across Empires: An agenda for future research in Central and Southeastern European history of medicine," in D. Sechel, ed, Medicine Within and Between the Habsburg and Ottoman Empires, 18th and 19th Centuries (2011), 235-242
“Academic History Writing in the Balkans to 1945," in Juan Maiguaschca, Stuart Macintyre, Attila Pok, eds, vol. IV, The Oxford History of Historical Writing ( 2011), 349-366
“Controlling the National Body: Ideas of Racial Purification in Romania, 1918-1944," in Christian Promitzer, Sevasti Trubeta, Marius Turda, eds, Health, Hygiene and Eugenics in Southeastern Europe to 1945 (2011), 325-350
“Race, Science and Eugenics in the Twentieth Century," in Alison Bashford, Philippa Levine, eds, The Oxford Handbook of the History of Eugenics (2010), 98-127
“Eugenika negatywna w Europie przed 1933 r." in Magdaleny Gawin, Kamili Uzarczyk, eds, Eugenika-biopolitika-panstwo (2010), 29-48
“Rasse, Eugenik und Nationalismus in Rumänien während der 1940er Jahre," in Wolfgang Benz, Brigitte Mihok, eds, Holocaust an der Peripherie: Judenpolitik und Judenmord in Rumänien undTransnistrien, 1940-1944 (2009), 161-171
“National Historiographies in the Balkans, 1830-1989," in Stefan Berger, Chris Lorenz, eds, The Contested Nation: Ethnicity, Class, Religion and Gender in National Histories (2008), 463-489
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"Public Health and Social Politics in Southeast Europe in the 1920," in Giannis Kyriopoulos, ed, Dimosia ygeia kai koinoniki politiki: O Eleftherios Venizelos kai i epohi tou (2008), 517-522
"Eugenics, Race and Nation in Central and Southeast Europe, 1900-1940: A Historiographic Overview,” in Marius Turda and Paul Weindling, eds, Blood and Homeland: Eugenics and Racial Nationalism in Central and Southeast Europe, 1900-1940 (2007), 1-22
“The First Debates on Eugenics in Hungary, 1910-1918,” in Marius Turda and Paul Weindling, eds, 'Blood and Homeland': Eugenics and Racial Nationalism in Central and Southeast Europe, 1900-1940 (2007), 185-221
“Small States, Big Ambitions: Debating Nation and Irredentism in the Balkans, 1890-1920” in Linas Eriksonas, Leos Müller, eds, Statehood beyond Ethnicity: Trans-National Perspectives onto Smaller States in Europe, c. 1600-2000 (2005), 275-301
“Transylvania Revisited: Public Discourse and Historical Representation in Contemporary Romania,” in Balázs Trencsényi, Dragos Petrescu, Cristina Petrescu, Constantin Iordachi and Zoltán Kántor, eds., Nation Building and Contested Identities: Romanian & Hungarian Case Studies (2002), 197-206
“Deciding the National Capital: Budapest, Vienna, Bucharest and Transylvanian Romanian Culture,” in Kurt W. Treptow, Tradition and Modernity in Romanian Culture and Civilization (2001), 95-114
Publication in press:
“Subversive Affinities: Embracing Soviet Science in late 1940s Romania,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences (209/20)
Special Issues of Peer-Reviewed Journals
Editor of a special issue on Religion, Heredity and Evolution (2018)
Editor of a special issue on Eugenic Sub-cultures and the City for Journal of Urban Anthropology (2015)
Editor of a special issue on Health and Society: Private and Public Medical Traditions in Greece and the Balkans, 1453-1920, Deltos: Journal of the History of Hellenic Medicine (2012)
Editor of a special issue on Race Ascendant: Framing physical anthropology in Central and Southeastern Europe, Focaal 58, 3 (2010).
General Editor
A Cultural History of Race, 6 volumes (London, 2020-) (under contract with Bloomsbury)
Series Editor of CEU Press Studies in the History of Medicine
In 2007 I established a book series with CEU Press in Budapest to encourage original works of comprehensive synthesis as well as those based on original archival research on medical humanities in East-Central Europe and the wider world. To date, as series editor, I have published 10 volumes on diverse topics such as: the politics of population in Bulgaria; eugenics and fascism in Italy; race and eugenics in Portugal; and the impact on Darwinism on Greek literary culture; eugenics in Japan and the professionalization of medicine in modern Romania.
Membership of research bodies
2018-present Member in the Editorial Board, Clio Medica: Studies in the History of Medicine and Health (Netherlands)
2017-present: Member in the Editorial Board, Social History of Medicine (UK)
2017-present: Member in the Scientific Committee, Maison Française d’Oxford (UK)
2015-present: Fellow, Galton Institute (UK)
2014-present: Member of the Scientific Advisory Board, Archiva Moldaviae (Romania)
2014-present: Member of the American Hungarian Educators Association (USA)
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2010- 2015: Member of the Editorial Board of Wetenschappelijke tijdingen (Wt) (Belgium)
2012- 2013: Member of the Advisory Committee of the Centre for Global History, University of Oxford (UK)
2012- 2013: Senior Member, St Antony’s College, University of Oxford (UK)
2012-present: Assistant editor of the book series Reflections on (In) Humanity, V& R Unipress (Germany)
2012-present: Member of the International Commission for the History and Theory of Historiography
2011-present: Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (UK)
2010-2015: Member of the Scientific Council of NISE: National Movements and Intermediary Structures in Europe (Belgium)
2010-present: Member, History Faculty, University of Oxford (UK)
2010-present: Founder and Series editor of Central European University Press Studies in the History of Medicine, Budapest (Hungary)
2010-present: Member of the Editorial Board of Religion Compass (Modern Ideologies and Faith) (UK)
Organisation of international conferences (selected)
9 October 2017: Organiser of the roundtable “On Bigotry and Racism, from the Global to the Local”, Oxford Brookes University
31 Aug- 3 September 2017: Organiser of a double-panel on ‘Ruptures and Fractures: Demographic Discourses and Policies in their Local and Global Contexts’ for the 5th European Congress on World and Global History, Budapest
18 January 2017: Organiser of the workshop “Reproduction Rights and Wrongs”, Oxford Brookes University
13-15 September 2016: Co-organiser of the international conference, “Identities in Between: East-Central Europe, ca.1900-present”, Wolfson College, University of Oxford
3-4 April 2014: Organiser of the international workshop “Motherhood, Family, Reproduction: The Theory and Practice of Eugenics”, Balliol College, University of Oxford
4-7 July 2013: Co-organiser of the international conference “Reassessing Nazi Human Experiments and Coerced Research, 1933-1945: New Findings, Interpretations and Problems”, Wadham College, Oxford
20 April 2012: Organiser of the international workshop “Puériculture, Biotypology and ‘Latin’ Eugenics in Comparative Context. Maison Française d’Oxford
8-10 September 2011: Organiser of the international conference “Crafting Humans: From Genesis to Eugenics and Beyond.” Queen’s College, Oxford
8-10 December 2010: Organiser of the international Symposium “Health and Society: Private and Public Medical Traditions in Greece and the Balkans (1453-1920).” University of Athens, Greece
9-12 September 2010: Co-organiser of the international conference “Intercultural Humanism: Challenges, Experiences, Visions, Strategies.” Christ Church, Oxford
7-8 May 2009: Co-organiser of the international conference “Eugenics, Race and Psychiatry in the Baltic States: A Trans-National Perspective.” Goethe-Institut Riga, Latvia
20-23 November 2008: Co-organiser of the international conference “Medicine within and between the Empire (Habsburg and Ottoman).” Medical University of Vienna, Josephinum, Austria
18-19 April 2008: Co-organiser of the international conference “Eugenics, Modernisation and Biopolitics.” Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Science Warsaw, Poland
31 May – 2 June 2007: Co-organiser of the international Conference “Hygiene – Health Politics – Eugenics: Engineering Society in Twentieth Century Southeastern Europe”. Free University Berlin, Germany
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2007-2013: Co-organiser of the Central European Seminar, University of Oxford
1 December 2006: Organiser of the international workshop “Social Hygiene, Eugenics and Heredity in Central Europe, 1900-1940”. Institute for Human Sciences, Vienna, Austria
7-9 April 2006: Co-organiser of the international conference, “Clerical Fascism in Interwar Europe.” Oxford Brookes University
27-30 June 2004: Organiser of the international conference “Technologies of Race: Eugenics, Bio-Politics and Nation-Building in Inter-War Europe,” CEU Budapest
Selected conference, seminar participation, public lectures and keynotes:
Conference papers:
4-7 September 2014: Fourth European Congress on World and Global History, Paris. Paper presented: ‘Population policies in Hungary and Romania during the 1930s and 1940s’
19-20 June 2014: ‘Agents of Internationalism Workshop, Birkbeck College, London. Paper presented: ‘Reluctant Internationalists: Latin Eugenicists in Europe, 1918-1939’
8-10 September 2011: International Conference ‘Crafting Humans: From Genesis to Eugenics and Beyond. Paper presented: ‘Crafting Humanity, Modernity and Biopolitics’
8-10 December 2010: International Symposium on ‘Health and Society: Private and Public Medical Traditions in Greece and the Balkans (1453-1920)’, University of Athens, Athens. Paper presented: ‘Ancients and Moderns: The rise of Social history of Medicine in the Balkans’
6-8 March 2008: XVIth International Conference, Council for European Studies at Columbia University, Chicago. Paper presented: ‘Anthropology in Contested Territories: Transylvania, 1918-1944’
3-6 November 2005: 37th Annual Convention of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, Salt Lake City. Paper presented: ‘The Biology of War: Eugenics in Hungary during the First World War’
4-5 June 2005: International Conference on ‘Ethnic Dimensions of Elite Formation in Modern Transylvania (1850-1950)’, Budapest, The Central European University. Paper presented: ‘Blood and Ethnicity: Racial Research in Transylvania, 1930-1940’
21 May 2005: Workshop on ‘Taxonomies, Translations, Exchanges: Race, 1760-1980’, Centre for History and Economics, King’s College, Cambridge. Paper presented: ‘Race and Eugenics’
5-7 April 2005: International Conference on ‘Vienna between the Wars – The Forgotten City?’, St. Peter’s College, University of Oxford, Paper presented: ‘Austria Turns Eastwards: Scientific Individuality and the Lure of National Socialism, 1927-1938’
Seminars: 5 November 2018: ‘Catholicism, Reproduction and Eugenics in Interwar Hungary,' Seminar in History of Science, Medicine and Technology, to be held at the History Faculty, University of Oxford
21 October 2013: ‘Regeneration and Degeneration: The Eugenicist’ View’, The Long Nineteenth Century Seminar, University of Oxford
Public lectures:
1 December 2018: ‘Greater Romania 1918: Some Historical Reflections’, Romanian Cultural Institute, London
23 November 2017: ‘Eugenics, Biopolitics and the Ethnic State in Romania,’ Municipal Museum of Bucharest
13 December 2016: ‘Identities under Threat’, Romanian Cultural Institute, London
27 May 2016: ‘Narratives of Suffering: Memoirs of Jewish Physicians in the Holocaust”, EHESS, Paris
19 May 2016: ‘Latin Eugenics and the Internationalisation of Science’, Centre de la Vieille-Charité, Marseille
13 April 2016: ‘Eugenics, Population and Biopolitics in East-Central Europe, 1900-1945’, EHESS, Paris
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11 April 2016: ‘Race and Physical Anthropology in East-Central Europe’, EHESS, Paris
1 October 2015: “Eugenics as a Secular Religion”. University of York
13 February 2015: ‘Eugenics as a Secular Religion’, the Institute of History, Polish Academy of Sciences
20 November 2014: ‘Eugenics as Science in Central and Southeastern Europe’, the Masaryk University, Brno
21 March 2012: ‘Crafting Humans: Modernity, Eugenics and Biopolitics’, Université Paris Diderot-Paris 7
6 March 2012: ‘Eugenics, Modernity, and the National Community’, City University of Hong Kong
8 May 2011: Public lecture on ‘Eugenic Modernities in Southeastern Europe’, University of Graz
7 May 2011: Public lecture on ‘Eugenic Modernities in Central Europe’, University of Ljubljana
Keynote speeches:
26 April 2016: ‘Academic Engagement and Civic Responsibility in the XXI Century’, international conference on ‘Diaspora, Scientific Research and High Education’ organised in Timisoara under the high patronage of the President of Romania
3 July 2015: “Health and Social Welfare in Southeastern and Eastern Europe: A Troubled Relationship”. Birkbeck College, University of London,
14 February 2015: ‘Modernity and Eugenic Visions of Human Improvement’ at the Conference on ‘Progress and Hygiene’, Warsaw, Zachęta National Gallery of Art
10-11 November 2011: Eugenics in National and Historical Contexts’ at the International Conference’ The Study of Eugenics: Past, Present and Future, University of Uppsala
4 March 2008: “Ethnic Modernism and Scientific Nationalism: Reflections on Biopolitics in Interwar Romania”. University of Bloomington, Indiana
Membership of peer-review funding bodies, publishers and journals
Reviewer for a number of peer-review funding bodies, both in the UK and abroad, including the Wellcome Trust; AHRC, SSHRC (the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada), Executive Agency for Higher Education, Research (Romania) and European Research Council (ERC). I also regularly review manuscripts for a number of publishers in the UK, USA and Europe such as OUP, Palgrave, Berg, CEU Press, MIT, Berghahn and Columbia University Press, as well as manuscripts for the following journals, as part of their peer-reviewing process: Slavic Review, Central European History, Austrian History Yearbook, Medical History, Social History of Medicine, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, Historical Journal, English Historical Review.