Zukunftskolleg
Germany
fellow
Gruia Badescu
2022-2023
2023-2024
2024-2025
2025-2026
2029-2030
Discipline(s)
Contemporary history; Cultural studies; Modern history; Social and economic history; Social Sciences; Sociology
Theme(s)
Cities & States; Cultural Studies; Democracy, Citizenship, Governance; Human Rights; Inequalities, inclusion & Social Innovation; Migration; Peace & conflict; Regional Studies
Fellowship dates
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Biography
Gruia Bădescu is a Research Fellow at Zukunftskolleg, University of Konstanz. He holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge and was a lecturer and research associate at the University of Oxford before joining Konstanz in 2018. His research examines the relationship between spatial reconfigurations and the transformation of societies in the aftermath of ruptures. He is a founder and co-convener of the Memory, Space and Place and the Memory and Critical Human Rights working groups of the Memory Studies Association.
Research Project
Urban Imaginaries and Political Change: Modernity, cosmopolitanism and spatial reconfigurations
This project interrogates the impact of historical ruptures and political transformation on cities. It investigates cities in three situations - end of empire, the aftermath of war, and transition from dictatorship. It examines how urban imaginaries- the way in which urban actors understand the city's specificity- are reshaped by political change, as well as how this has an impact of spatial reconfigurations of cities and of social practices in the transformed space. It discusses the historical experiences of cities that identify with two particular urban imaginaries, related to understandings of cosmopolitanism and modernity.
Research Interests:
History; Sociology; Urban and architectural history and theory; Post-war reconstruction: urban reconstruction, refugees and IDPs; Dealing with the past after war and dictatorship, memory, transitional justice; The relationship between urban/spatial reconfigurations and political transitions; Southeastern Europe; relations to the Middle East and the Southern Cone of Latin America