Franco Moretti
Principal Investigator. Franco Moretti has taught English and Comparative Literature at the universities of Salerno and Verona, at Columbia, and at Stanford, where he founded the Center for the Study of the Novel and the Literary Lab. He has published several books, among which The Way of the World, Atlas of the European Novel 1800-1900, Graphs Maps Trees. Abstract Models for Literary History, The Bourgeois, and Distant Reading. His books and essays have been translated into thirty languages.
Andrei Terian
Executive Manager. Andrei Terian is Professor of Romanian literature and Vice Rector for Research, Innovation, and Internationalization at the Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu, Romania. His specialties are 19th to 21st century Romanian literature, world literature, and cultural heritage. He has published essays in international journals such as Textual Practice, Life Writing, CLCWeb – Comparative Literature and Culture, Slovo, World Literature Studies, Primerjalna Književnost, Interlitteraria, ALEA: Estudos Neolatinos. His latest books include the coedited volumes Romanian Literature as World Literature (Bloomsbury, 2018) and Theory in the “Post” Era (Bloomsbury, 2021; AATSEEL Prize for Best Multi-Scholarly Volume). He is the also the PI of the projects “A Transnational History of Romanian Literature” (2021–2026) and “Establishing a Laboratory of Cultural Heritage in Central Romania” (2023–2025).
Senior Researchers
Imre József BALÁZS is Associate Professor at Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, and Research Fellow at Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu. He published volumes in Romania and Hungary, in the academic field of the avant-garde, socialist realism, and contemporary literature. He attended regularly conferences and events organized by the European Network for Avant-Garde and Modernism Studies, and the International Society for the Study of Surrealism, publishing book chapters in the area with De Gruyter, Brill, UTB, Peter Lang, Bloomsbury, Anthem Press. He is editor of the cultural magazine Korunk. His most recent, award-winning book is “Rețele avangardiste, afilieri multiple” (Avant-garde Networks, Multiple Affiliations, Bucharest; Tracus Arte, 2023).
Mihai DASCALU is a Professor of Computer Science at the National University of Science and Technology POLITEHNICA Bucharest, conducting research in ML/NLP. Mihai has a double PhD in Computer Science and Educational Sciences with the highest honors. Mihai has extensive experience in national and international research projects. He published more than 300 papers, including 30+ articles at top-tier conferences (AIED, ACL, Coling, AAAI) and 10+ Q1 journal papers. He obtained a Senior Fulbright scholarship in 2015 at ASU, holds the US patent # 9734144 B2, and is also a corresponding member of the Academy of Romanian Scientists.
Teodora DUMITRU has earned her PhD from the University of Bucharest and is currently a Senior Researcher with the G. Călinescu Institute of Literary History and Theory of the Romanian Academy. Her research focuses on the relation between meta-literary and scientific discourses (19th-20th centuries), literary epistemology, and history of modernity / modernism / postmodernism. Her books are „The Evolutionary Syndrome” / „Sindromul evoluţionist” (2013), „Literary and Political Modernity at Eugen Lovinescu” / „Modernitatea politică și literară în gândirea lui E. Lovinescu” (2016) and „The Web of Modernities: Paul de Man – Matei Călinescu – Antoine Compagnon” / „Rețeaua modernităților: Paul de Man – Matei Călinescu – Antoine Compagnon” (2016).
Mihai IOVĂNEL earned his PhD from University of Bucharest and is a Senior Researcher with the G. Călinescu Institute of Literary History and Theory of the Romanian Academy. He is the author of The Improbable Jew—Mihail Sebastian: An Ideological Monograph (2012), The Detective Novel (2015), The Ideologies of Romanian Postcommunist Literature (2017), and History of Contemporary Romanian Literature: 1990-2020 (2021). He coedited the eight-volume General Dictionary of Romanian Literature (2016-2021).
Diana NECHIT is Associate Professor at the Drama and Theatre Studies Department of the Faculty of Letters and Arts (Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu). She obtained her PhD in philology at the University of Bucharest, specializing in French literature, with a thesis dedicated to the dramaturgy of Bernard-Marie Koltès and is habilitated in performing arts. She is a coordinator in the field of Theatre and Performing Arts at the Doctoral School of the Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu. She has published studies on contemporary French theatre, adaptations, and revisitations of canonical texts as well as theatre and film reviews in several specialized magazines in Romania.
Stefan RUSETI is an Associate Professor at the National University of Science and Technology Politehnica Bucharest and holds a PhD in Computer Science. His research activity covers many areas in Natural Language Processing (NLP), most studies being dedicated to applying NLP techniques to build tools for educational scenarios. He has experience in national and international projects and has more than 75 published papers, including 13 articles at top conferences (EMNLP, COLING, ECIR, AIED) and 6 articles published in Q1 journals (Computers & Education, Computers in Human Behavior).
Ion M. TOMUȘ is a Professor at Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu, the Department of Drama and Theatre Studies. He is member of the Centre for Advanced Studies in the Field of Performing Arts (CAVAS). In 2008 he received his PhD (in theatre and performing arts) from the National University of Drama and Film, Bucharest, with a doctoral thesis entitled Realist and Naïve Picturesqueness in Vasile Alecsandri’s, I. L. Caragiale’s, and Eugene Ionesco’s Plays and Their Stage Adaptations. He is the associate editor of Journal of Performing Arts and since 2005 is part of the staff of Sibiu International Theatre Festival.
Radu VANCU is Professor of Romanian literature at the Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu. Between 2019 and 2023 he has served as president of PEN Romania. He is editor-in-chief of the Transilvania journal (SCOPUS Q1) and an editor of the Poesis International magazine. He was the national editor of the Romanian section of the Poetry International website. Vancu has translated novels and poetry, mainly from English; he is also the translator of the on-going four-volume Ezra Pound edition coordinated by Horia-Roman Patapievici. He is an organizer of the International Poetry Festival in Sibiu Poets in Transylvania (2013-ongoing).
Dragoș VARGA is Professor of Literary Theory and Dean of the Faculty of Letters and Arts at the Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu, Romania. His specialties are Romanian literature, literary theory, narratology, and aesthetics. He was the manager of the Transilvania Interethnic Cultural Center and works as an editor of the Scopus Q1 journal Transilvania. He co-edited several collective volumes and anthologies. His recent monographs are “Radu Stanca. The Aesthetic Sense of Being” (2010), “In Search of the Perfect Narrator” (2011), “Colloquials. Critical and aesthetic perspectives” (2013), “The Chronology of Romanian Literary Life: The Postwar Era”, vol. 29: 1983 (2021), all of them in Romanian.
Postdoctoral Researchers
Stefan BAGHIU is Assistant Professor of Romanian literature and literary theory with the Department of Romance Studies at the Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu and the editorial secretary of the Scopus Q1 journal Transilvania (www.revistatransilvania.ro). He is also one of the coordinators of the “Digital Museum of the Romanian Novel” (1845-1947), the first digital archive of the Romanian modern novel available for research and public access. He has coedited several collective volumes, such as “Ruralism and Literature in Romania” (Berlin: Peter Lang, 2019) or “Beyond the Iron Curtain: Revisiting the Literary System of Communist Romania” (Berlin: Peter Lang, 2021).
Olga BARTOSIEWICZ-NIKOLAEV is Assistant Professor at the Institute of Romance Philology at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Associate Member of The Modern Literary Philology Research Center at Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca, member of the Polish Literary Translators Association. Author of the monograph book devoted to B. Fundoianu’s / B. Fondane’s work (2018). She has many refereed publications on modernism in Romanian culture and literature, and social contexts of Romanian contemporary prose and poetry. Translator of Romanian fiction, poetry and essays, awarded in 2019 by the literary magazine “Literatura na Świecie” for her translation of Adrian Schiop’s novel “Soldiers. Story from Ferentari”.
Gianina DRUȚĂ, born in 1992, is an Associate Professor of drama and theatre at the Faculty of Education and International Studies, Oslo Metropolitan University, Norway. She took her PhD with a thesis on Ibsen’s early performance history in the Romanian theatre. She graduated from the Faculty of Letters, Babeș-Bolyai University, and has a BA-degree in Norwegian and Italian language and literature, and a MA-degree in comparative literature on the History of Images – History of Ideas. Since 2015 she has been responsible for the Romanian dataset in the performance database IbsenStage. Her research activity focuses on Scandinavian literature, theatre studies and Digital Humanities.
Tomasz KRUPA is a Research Assistant Professor with the Institute of Romance Studies at Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland. He is also a member of the Europes-Eurasia Research Centre (CREE) at the National Institute for Oriental Languages and Civilizations (INALCO) in Paris, where he defended his doctoral thesis in 2022, titled Body and Otherness in the Writing of Sorana Gurian. His dissertation was nominated for the INALCO Best PhD Thesis Award. Since 2021, he has been part of the editorial team of the journal Romanica Cracoviensia. He specializes in 20th-century Romanian and French-language literature, with a focus on gender studies, feminist literary criticism, and the reception of women’s writing. His research also explores transnational and sociological approaches to semiperipheral literatures, particularly Romanian and Polish, and their immediate interactions.
Laurențiu-Marian NEAGU is a university Lecturer and PhD in computer science at the National University of Science and Technology Politehnica Bucharest. With over a decade of academic and research experience, he has developed expertise in areas such as machine learning, natural language processing, gamification, and artificial intelligence. He holds a bachelor’s and master’s degree in computer science from the Politehnica University of Bucharest and a dual PhD from the same institution and Mines ParisTech, focusing on enhancing sports performance through machine learning and gamification. He has collaborated on significant research projects with institutions like the International Ski Federation, Mines ParisTech, and the Romanian Academy, contributing to many international conference papers and an UNESCO book chapter.
Ovio OLARU is Assistant Professor of German and Norwegian Language and Literature with the Department of Anglo-American and German Studies at Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu. His fields of research include German, Romanian, and Scandinavian studies, as well as Comparative Literature. His PhD thesis on the Internationalization of Scandinavian Noir addresses the global dynamics of popular culture by pursuing the global dissemination of Scandinavian crime fiction authors from a quantitative perspective. Most recently, his focus has shifted towards projects dealing with The Digital Archive of the Romanian Novel. He is also a translator of Scandinavian literature. He co-edited “Beyond the Iron Curtain. Revisiting the Literary System of Communist Romania” (Berlin: Peter Lang, 2021) and “The German Model in Romanian Culture” (Berlin: Peter Lang, 2023).
Vlad POJOGA is Vice-Dean for Academic Affairs and Lecturer in World Literature and Narrative Theory at the Faculty of Letters and Arts at Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu, Romania. He wrote a PhD on interactive narratives and co-edited two volumes, “The Culture of Translation in Romania” and “Ruralism and Literature in Romania”, both published with Peter Lang. He has translated extensively from English into Romanian, including Fredric Jameson’s “Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism.” His research focuses mainly on the relationship between literature and the digital and the integration of Romanian literature into world literature. He is one of the editors of SCOPUS Q1 journal Transilvania.
Snejana UNG is Research Assistant at Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu. She specializes in post-Yugoslav literature, Romanian novel, and the inter-peripheral circulation of literature and criticism in South-Eastern Europe, mainly between Romania and Yugoslavia. She wrote a PhD on post-Yugoslav literature as world literature. She also contributed to the volumes “Ruralism and Literature in Romania” (edited by Ștefan Baghiu, Vlad Pojoga, and Maria Sass, Peter Lang, 2019), “The German Model in Romanian Culture” (edited by Maria Sass, Ovio Olaru, and Andrei Terian, Peter Lang, 2023), and published articles in international journals, such as Primerjalna književnost.
PhD Candidates
Victor COBUZ is a PhD student at the University of Bucharest. He researches the presence of composite fiction in Romanian literature. Besides literary genre theory and history and narratology, other research interests are Romanian postcommunist literature, world literature and the relationship between literature and ideology.
Alexandra OPRESCU is currently a Junior Researcher with the G. Călinescu Institute of Literary History and Theory of the Romanian Academy. She is also a PhD Student of the Doctoral School in Letters, University of Bucharest. Her research focuses on (re)constructing the profile of the Interwar novel reader, from a sociological approach to literature. She is also the author of Chronology of Romanian Literary Life – 2010 (Editura Muzeul Literaturii Române, 2023).
Andreea POPESCU is a PhD student at the Faculty of Letters and Arts at Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu, Romania. Her field of research is Romanian studies, particularly literature written after the fall of the communist regime. Her academic interests focus on connecting fictional spaces with social and cultural realities, investigating different manners in which the geopolitical context of various countries affects literary productions and development, with a particular emphasis on the manifestations in Eastern European countries.
Teodora SUSARENCO is a PhD student at Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu. Her research interests include Romanian poetry and quantitative research methods in literature. Her doctoral work focuses on a quantitative analysis of 19th-century Romanian poetry using sentiment analysis. She has also participated in various collaborative research projects, with a focus on the digital archiving of the Romanian novel. She is proficient in Russian.
Aura Cristina UDREA is a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Automatic Control and Computer Science at the National University of Science and Technology Politehnica Bucharest (UPB), conducting research in the field of Natural Language Processing. She has a multidisciplinary approach with expertise in linguistics and literature, as well as a significant interest in artificial intelligence. Her doctoral thesis investigates the differentiation of writing styles and the classification of literary microgenres in Romanian novels.