New Europe College

19/10/2026

Tuesday and Wednesday at the "Nicolae Iorga" History Institute, with a great line up of speakers, including several NEC alumni.

19/10/2026

Thursday (at NEC and online) and Friday (online only)
"Borderland Voices: Identities, Communities, Minorities along the Lower Danube and the Western Black Sea (18th–20th Centuries)"
Annual Conference of the Institute for South-East European Studies, 8th edition

22 October 2026, 10.00–14.40 (Bucharest time)
23 October 2026, 10.00–13.45 (Bucharest time)

NEC Institute for Advanced Study

16/10/2026

Still time to apply (deadline 31 October 2026) for this workshop organized in Varna by our colleagues from the Center for Advanced Study in Sofia as part of the Sustaining Ukrainian Scholarship Program.

Conference Theme: Journeys Across the Black Sea: Mobility, Conflict, and Culture (from Antiquity to the 21st Century)
Location: Varna, Bulgaria
Dates: 20-24 June 2027

NEC Institute for Advanced Study

16/10/2026

Joi, 29 octombrie 2026, ora 17.00, la NEC

Masă rotundă pe marginea cărții: Valentina Sandu-Dediu, „Muzici în tonuri naţionaliste” (Humanitas, 2026), în prezența autoarei
Participanți: Constantin ARDELEANU, Andreea EȘANU, Ioana PÂRVULESCU, Antigona RĂDULESCU, Valentina SANDU-DEDIU

„Combinând perspective muzicologice, istorice și culturale, studiul Valentinei Sandu-Dediu arată cm muzica a reflectat și a modelat naţionalismele Europei moderne şi plasează cultura muzicală românească într-un cadru continental mai amplu. De la stiluri muzicale propriu-zise până la presiunile ideologice şi politice, cartea oferă o modalitate originală de a «asculta» istoria zbuciumată a secolului XX european.“ — Alex DRACE-FRANCIS

„E muzica scrisă în vremea unei dictaturi diferită de cea compusă într-o lume liberă? Poți să-i convingi pe auditori că ești autentic, dar să te inspiri din muzica națională a altora? E oare naționalismul o ideologie mai influentă în muzica românească decât în cea franceză, rusă, italiană sau germană? Sunt doar câteva din întrebările la care răspunde Valentina Sandu-Dediu într-o carte populată cu figuri cunoscute ca Enescu, Rahmaninov, Bartók sau Schönberg. Erudită, autoa­rea ne îndrumă în hățișul instituțiilor, temelor și emoțiilor muzicale care au făcut ca naționalismul să fie la loc de cinste.“ — Cristian PREDA

„Că Enescu și-a petrecut cea mai mare parte a vieții în afara României e un fapt. Că muzica lui e impregnată de influențe franceze, germane, austriece e un alt fapt demn de luat în seamă. Că regimurile totalitare sunt specializate în rescrierea și măsluirea istoriei – politice, culturale, artistice – în scopuri ideologice este, iarăși, un fapt. În muzică însă, mai mult decât în alte arte, se discerne mai greu ce e propagandă și ce e adevăr și autenticitate. Studiul Valentinei Sandu-Dediu se numără printre puținele și valoroasele abordări ale muzicii culte din perspectiva ideologiei naționaliste. E vorba despre o istorie a receptării încorsetate de „corectitudinea ideologică”. Confiscarea politică a unor mari compozitori, mistificarea biografiilor lor și naționalismul muzical, etnicist, religios, rasist, stau sub lupa unei analize lucide și exemplar documentate. Principalele arii de interes ale acestei explorări a muzicii din Europa secolului XX se îndreaptă către muzica și compozitorii folosiți politic de național socialismul german, de naționalismul francez interbelic (pe când numeroși compozitori români se aflau sub luminile Parisului) și de naționalismul cultivat de comunismul sovietic. Nu e întâmplător că deopotrivă Hi**er și Stalin se declarau melomani și nici că realismul socialist s-a înrădăcinat adânc în Uniunea Compozitorilor și Muzicologilor din România, în Opereta și Filarmonica bucureșteană și în muzicologie. Cartea de față poate fi o inedită introducere la Festivalul Enescu din fiecare an și un avertisment față de vremurile pe care le (re)trăim.“ — Tatiana NICULESCU

https://nec.ro/events/muzici-in-tonuri-nationaliste/

15/10/2026

NEC hosted yesterday the talk "Who is Protected? Corruption as Informal Governance – and What It Means for the Reconstruction of Ukraine", given by Michael DERRER, Professor of Economic Sociology, Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts (HSLU)

Short abstract:
In environments of deep informality, corruption is not a malfunction of administration but part of how governance works. Permits, contracts and decisions from authorities are not granted on equal terms. The law is not simply broken — it is applied to some and suspended for others. The question is therefore not who is guilty, but what decides who is protected and who is exposed.

Drawing on fifty interviews with businesspeople, officials and researchers in Moscow and Kyiv, and on three decades of work in the post-communist region, the lecture shows how some come to be left alone by inspectors and prosecutors, what this costs them, and what happens when protection ends. It then asks why such practices survive cycles of reform. The framework proposed compares the constellation of actors and informal rules in a particular place, which makes it usable across countries, regions, and sectors.

The final part concerns Ukraine’s reconstruction and the European accession process. A rebuilding effort without parallel is moving towards the positions where control over money is easiest to seize, while the usual anticorruption instruments — perception indices, compliance checklists, beneficial-ownership registers — confirm that formal requirements have been observed. The risk settles where those instruments do not reach: an impeccable audit may simply mean that the leak is where the audit does not look. For a company, this is the uncomfortable part: it may do everything correctly and still have no assurance of how it will be treated.

The lecture closes with a set of questions that each participant can apply to the country and the sector they know best. The discussion is open to participants working in international cooperation and funding projects.

Short bio:
Michael Derrer is Professor of Economic Sociology at Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts (HSLU). He has worked for three decades in Central and Eastern Europe as a consultant, company director and certified legal interpreter in more than ten languages, including Romanian. The research presented appears in full in a trilogy with Peter Lang Academic Publishers (2026–2027); further info can be found at hslu.ch/beyondintegrity.

*

This event is part of series of public lectures within the framework of the Politics, Legitimacy and Representation in Strained Societies (POLARIS) research group at New Europe College, supported by UEFISCDI – The Executive Agency for Higher Education, Research, Development and Innovation Funding of the Ministry of Research and Education of Romania (PN-IV-P8-8.1-PRE-HE-ORG-2023-0055).

14/10/2026

The weekly NEC seminar: "Bearing Witness or Expressing Dissent? Photography in Communist Romania", presentation by Uschi KLEIN, Trust Fellow; Senior Lecturer, University of Brighton

My project interrogates photography’s role as a medium of covert resistance and communicative practice in communist Romania. Through critical reinterpretation of archival photographs from that period, it examines the entanglement of photography, memory, resistance politics, everyday practices and historical imagination, offering both innovative modes of witnessing and critical insights into visuality under authoritarianism.

https://nec.ro/fellow/uschi-klein/

13/10/2026

Tomorrow evening at NEC (14 October, 17.00-19.00).

"Who is Protected? Corruption as Informal Governance – and What It Means for the Reconstruction of Ukraine”
Michael DERRER, Professor of Economic Sociology, Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts (HSLU)
Short abstract:
In environments of deep informality, corruption is not a malfunction of administration but part of how governance works. Permits, contracts and decisions from authorities are not granted on equal terms. The law is not simply broken — it is applied to some and suspended for others. The question is therefore not who is guilty, but what decides who is protected and who is exposed.

Drawing on fifty interviews with businesspeople, officials and researchers in Moscow and Kyiv, and on three decades of work in the post-communist region, the lecture shows how some come to be left alone by inspectors and prosecutors, what this costs them, and what happens when protection ends. It then asks why such practices survive cycles of reform. The framework proposed compares the constellation of actors and informal rules in a particular place, which makes it usable across countries, regions, and sectors.

The final part concerns Ukraine’s reconstruction and the European accession process. A rebuilding effort without parallel is moving towards the positions where control over money is easiest to seize, while the usual anticorruption instruments — perception indices, compliance checklists, beneficial-ownership registers — confirm that formal requirements have been observed. The risk settles where those instruments do not reach: an impeccable audit may simply mean that the leak is where the audit does not look. For a company, this is the uncomfortable part: it may do everything correctly and still have no assurance of how it will be treated.

The lecture closes with a set of questions that each participant can apply to the country and the sector they know best. The discussion is open to participants working in international cooperation and funding projects.

Short bio:
Michael Derrer is Professor of Economic Sociology at Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts (HSLU). He has worked for three decades in Central and Eastern Europe as a consultant, company director and certified legal interpreter in more than ten languages, including Romanian. The research presented appears in full in a trilogy with Peter Lang Academic Publishers (2026–2027); further info can be found at hslu.ch/beyondintegrity.

*

This event is part of series of public lectures within the framework of the Politics, Legitimacy and Representation in Strained Societies (POLARIS) research group at New Europe College, supported by UEFISCDI – The Executive Agency for Higher Education, Research, Development and Innovation Funding of the Ministry of Research and Education of Romania (PN-IV-P8-8.1-PRE-HE-ORG-2023-0055).

https://nec.ro/events/corruption-as-a-form-of-informal-governance/

12/10/2026

We have just launched the annual Call for Applications for the NEC Fellowships.
Romanian and international candidates in the humanities and social sciences can apply. See link below for details on NEC's various Fellowship programs.
Deadline for submitting applications: 17 January 2027
https://nec.ro/fellowships/apply-for-a-fellowship/
Please share to those interested

09/10/2026

Programul TANDEM, Author with Translator – Translator with Author, derulat de Colegiul Noua Europă și susținut de S. FISCHER Stiftung, se bucură și anul acesta de o prezență consistentă în cadrul prestigiosului FILIT. Vă aștepăm cu drag la evenimentul nostru!

08/10/2026

Lundi soir, à 17h00
"Liens d’esprit, liens de douleur. Benjamin Fondane, hôte de son traducteur Iason Depountis"
Danielle MORICHON, professeure de lettres classiques, traductrice et éditrice ; secrétaire de rédaction de la revue *Études Balkaniques – Cahiers Pierre Belon*.

La conférence se déroulera en français et sera accompagnée d’une présentation PowerPoint comprenant des diapositives en anglais.

The conference will be conducted in French, accompanied by a PowerPoint presentation with slides in English.

https://nec.ro/events/benjamin-fondane/