Dr. Adela Hîncu; Visiting Fellowship 2022/23
I am an intellectual historian researching state socialism, social thought, feminism, and the history of the social sciences and humanities in Eastern Europe, with a focus on Romania. I hold a PhD in Comparative History from Central European University (2019), and have been a visiting professor at Ilia State University, Tbilisi (2019–2020) and fellow at New Europe College, Bucharest (2020–21) and Imre Kertész Kolleg Jena (2021–2022). I was also a junior fellow in the project “Lost in Transition: Social Sciences, Scenarios of Transformation, and Cognitive Dissonances in East Central Europe after 1989,” hosted by Center for Advanced Study Sofia. I am currently a postdoctoral researcher in the project “Philosophy in Socialist Romania. A Case Study in Institutionalized Thought,” hosted by the “Alexandru Dragomir” Institute of Philosophy in Bucharest.
Visiting fellowship August 15–28, 2022
During this short term scientific mission conducted through the COST action “Who cares in Europe?” my work will consist of drafting a research paper that brings together findings from my doctoral research at Central European University on sociological research on quality of life and welfare; and from my postdoctoral research at the “Alexandru Dragomir” Institute of Philosophy on philosophical reflection about notions of “social care” from the point of view of socialist morals. I am especially interested in analyzing how ideas about social care are articulated in the work of women sociologists writing about agricultural labor and the roles of mostly female manual workers in the countryside in the late socialist period; and women philosophers writing in the field of axiology, one of the philosophical branches that was notably “feminized.” Can we speak of “gendered epistemologies” with regard to this work, and if so, how are we to recover the subjectivity of women intellectuals articulating ideas about “social care” from the particular positionality of women’s condition under state socialism? While at the institute, I will be discussing these ideas with members of the political history department in order to articulate them in a broader East Central European comparative context and to think through the continuities between the late socialist and postsocialist periods.
I also plan various networking activities that are meant to strengthen cooperation between my home and host institutes within the framework of the COST action, between WG4 and the network for the Intellectual History of East Central Europe, and to lay the groundwork for future funding applications, notably a Marie Curie individual research and a prospective COST action piloted by the Intellectual History in East Central Europe network.
Publications
- Adela Hîncu and Victor Karady, eds. Social Sciences in the “Other Europe” since 1945. Budapest: Pasts, Inc., Central European University, 2018.
- Adela Hîncu. “Social Science and Marxist Humanism beyond Collectivism in Socialist Romania.” History of the Human Sciences 35, no. 2 (2022): 77–100.
- Adela Hîncu. “Ambivalentes Empowerment: Sozialwissenschaftliche Forschung über die Ungleichstellung von Frauen im spätsozialistischen Rumänien.” Jahrbuch für Historische Kommunismusforschung, ed. Jens Gieseke, 105–125. Berlin: Metropol, 2022.
- Adela Hîncu. “Academic Mobility and Epistemological Change in State Socialist Romania: Three Generations of Sociologists, Western Social Science, and Quality of Life Research,” Serendipities: Journal for the Sociology and History of the Social Sciences 5, no. 1 (2021).
