Lecturer, head of the department
Research domains:
My research interests fall within the area of economic, social and political anthropology. I conducted research mostly in Transylvanian rural communities (but also in urban settings) in these fields encompassing the topics of mutuality and reciprocity in economic and social life, interethnic relations and the ethnic background of economic activities, changes and reconstruction of rurality, local ecological knowledge and agricultural restructuration, histories and narratives of socialism and postsocialism. In my first book published in 2002 I investigated the social roles of a local association that governed a specific segment (use of commons and sheep farming) of the local economic life. In my next larger project (results published in 2009) I focused on the different aspects of cooperation between households in rural communities. In my next book that was published in 2013 I continued the investigation of rural life, this time focusing on the relations between different ethnic groups in a multiethnic community and their connections to the globalised world. I argued that external connections became increasingly part of what would call local successes. In the next years (2014-2016) in a larger, multidisciplinary project (Culture and Nature in Transylvania: Past and Future, cultureandnature.ro) I supervised a group of young researchers who investigated the cultural heritage of a region and the intersections of culture and nature in the same area.