Last week, several members of our team presented their results in the Conference of the Department of Sociology from Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu (14th-15th of December, 2018). Two of the presentations are directly related to our groups interests:

Horatiu Rusu & Andrei Gheorghita - Social security spending and social solidarity in Romania.

The paper discusses the connection between support for solidarity (at individual level) and social expenses (at locality level).

Alexandra Deliu - Identity, dynamics and adjustments. The case of EU expats in Bucharest

The paper investigates how identity of EU expats to Bucharest is shaped by interaction with Romanian society.

On the conference:

When it comes to populism, one may have a lot of explanations, and most of them are rooted in the Western experience. What about how the populist landscape looks like in an Eastern European society, where populism seems embedded in the core of mainstream parties? Sorina Soare and our colleague Claudiu Tufiș bring to the readers an history of populism as displayed by political parties in the post-communist Romania. Their paper (party supported by our RemOSM grant) sheds light in a field almost unexplored, goes beyond the main parties, looks at newly established political competitors, and grasps in this way the dynamics of populist legitimacy in Romania. We strongly advise those interested to read the full paper, from which we have extracted the below table...

Are Romanians believing that Hell exists?

Data from WVS 2017-2018 allow us to answer the question.

We use the opportunity to launch our YouTube channel, with a rather experimental clip in which Bogdan Voicu explains how did belief in Hell changed over time, in Romania, and sketches a couple of explanations.

The very short clip is in Romanian, but English subtitles are provided as well.

While we still work on data cleaning the 2017-2018 versions of Romanian EVS and WVS datasets, it is time to introduce our new team members.

Romulus (PhD in Sociology, SNSPA, 2014) joined our group in spring 2018. He and his company (BrandBerry) provide studies in social and market research, as well as consultancy to various organizations. Active in the local community of Brașov, Romulus was included by Bussiness Magazine in its 2018 ranking of 100 Young Top Managers.

In spring 2018, Romulus carried out an online survey with respondents from the ten larger cities in Romania. The survey includes gender beliefs items identical to the ones in the current waves of EVS and WVS. Methodological experiments are likely to be carried out using data from the three sources.

One may see Romulus in action in its short interview for Business Magazine.

These days, our colleague Claudiu Tufiș is attending the "International Academic Conference of Values and Value Education under a Community with a Shared Future for Mankind" (June 19-21, 2018 – Changchun, China).

His presentation discusses the child-rearing values and makes use of the preliminary data from the 2017-2018 Romanian data from World Values Survey.

The basic message is the relative stability recorded in the past 5 years, with traditional values still being slightly more important as compared to imagination and independence.

Photos from the event in Changchun could be retrieved at this link.

- two associated researchers joined our team: Mălina Voicu and Romulus Oprica. You will find soon about their contributions;

Politics & Society 2017.
Democracy and Governance in the 21st Century

Sibiu, June 2nd-3rd, 2017

The 2017 edition of the conference continues the tradition initiated by the Department of Political Science, within the Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu. Debating Democracy and Governance, the conference invites abstract submissions until 19th of April.

First Annual Conference of the Romanian Network for Migration Studies (RoMig).
''Migration from and towards Romania.
Research, Policy and Practice''
Cluj-Napoca, 5th-6th of September 2017

Announced deadline for abstract submission: 15th of February 2017.