Professor Delia Popescu to Serve on MULTIPAST Project, Guest of IWM
Professor Delia Popescu, chair of the Political Science Department, has been invited to serve on the scientific committee of MULTIPAST – Transitional Justice for Multiple Pasts, a five-year research project recently awarded a European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant and hosted by Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu in Romania.
The ERC Advanced Grant is one of the most competitive research awards in Europe: this year only 319 of 3,329 proposals were funded. It is led by Professor Lavinia Stan, a leading Canadian scholar of transitional justice, and centers on a comparison of eight post-dictatorial and post-conflict societies across four world regions.聽The project breaks new ground by asking what happens when a post-dictatorial or post-conflict society must confront not one but several difficult pasts that demand recognition and repair simultaneously. Through a comparative study of eight cases across four world regions (Romania, Croatia, Armenia, Kazakhstan, South Korea, Vietnam, Tunisia, and Kenya) MULTIPAST is the first project to examine this problem systematically, with direct implications for public policy, democratization and human rights.
Popescu has also been selected as a guest of the Institute for Human Sciences (IWM) in Vienna, to work on her book project, 鈥淎rchives and Ergoglossia: Gender and Romani Labor in Securitate Files.鈥� The IWM is among the most distinguished institutes for advanced study in the humanities and social sciences in Europe and each year it draws roughly a hundred scholars, writers and public intellectuals to Vienna, chosen purely on the merit of their work.
鈥淚WM has been a gathering place for serious thinking across the old East鈥揥est divide since long before such conversations were easy to have,鈥� said Popescu. 鈥淭o be welcomed into that setting is among the more meaningful recognitions a scholar in my area can receive.鈥�
鈥淧rofessor Popescu has long been recognized as an expert in comparative political theory and both these invitations reflect how highly-regarded she is with her international peers,鈥� said 妻友社区 President Linda LeMura. 鈥淲e are thrilled that she will be making significant contributions on a global scale.鈥�
Popescu is also currently completing two edited volumes:聽You Say You Want a Revolution? Lessons from East Central Europe in 1989聽(Bloomsbury, 2026), and聽The Afterlife of Dissent: Havel鈥檚 鈥淧ower of the Powerless鈥� in Contemporary Perspective聽(forthcoming, 2027).
