Back from the brink or driving headlong into the chasm?

Name: Back from the brink or driving headlong into the chasm?
Start: 2025-11-25T17:00:00+00:00
Location: 16 Taviton Street, WC1H 0BW London, United Kingdom

Schedule

Tue, 25 Nov, 2025 at 05:00 pm

UTC+00:00

Location

16 Taviton Street, WC1H 0BW London, United Kingdom | London, EN

A PROLang roundtable event on Romanian politics and society after the Presidential elections of 2024-2025
The Romanian Presidential elections required three rounds, constitutional court interventions before Bucharest mayor Nicuşor Dan running as an independent candidate defeated Georghe Simion of the extreme right AUR party. Although the result might be viewed as being victory of a democratic Romania over an authoritarian Romania, the course of the election and the subsequent political, economic and social developments have thrown into sharp relief the volatile nature of political life and the potentially precariousness of Romanian democracy. The election has produced a number of questions: The success of the extreme right firstly with Calin Georgescu in the annulled first round, and then Georghe Simion in the re-runs, shows widespread support for authoritarian, extremist nationalism within Romania. The elections were marked by the failure of the PNL and PSD whose candidates failed to reach the second round in either election as well as the emergence of the USR This round table discussion will examine the results of the election, their causes and the consequences for politics and society in Romania and the Romanian diasporas.

Speakers:
Dennis Deletant
He served as Visiting Ion Rațiu Professor of Romanian Studies in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, Washington DC from August 2011 to July 2020. He is Emeritus Professor of Romanian Studies at University College, London, where he taught in the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, between 1969 and 2011, and was Professor of Romanian Studies at the University of Amsterdam (on secondment from UCL) between 2003 and 2010.
Alina Dolea
Her research is situated at the intersection of public diplomacy, migration, media and communication studies, with a focus on discourse. She is particularly interested in the role non-state actors have come to play in public diplomacy, reproducing, but also contesting and disrupting the state’s strategic communication. She developed a discursive and critical approach for the study of diaspora diplomacy and the role of emotions as 2022-2024 Research Fellow of the USC Centre on Public Diplomacy.
Ruxandra Trandafoiu
Her interdisciplinary research stradles nationalism studies, political communication and diaspora activism. Her research on Eastern European migration politics can be primarily found in two published monographs, Diaspora Online: Identity Politics and Romanian Migrants (Berghahn 2013) and The Politics of Migration and Diaspora in Eastern Europe. Media, Public Discourse and Policy (Routledge 2022).
Radu Cinpoes
His research interests include global political issues, right wing politics, human rights and social justice, and migration and refugee issues. He has published on the extreme right, nationalism, European identity and Romanian politics. Recent publications include: ‘Human Rights Education in Times of Adversity UK Government Agenda on Refugee Issues’ and ‘The Challenges of Political Protest and Democratic Representation in Romania’.
Dan Brett
He studied at Politics at the University of the West of England in Bristol before doing his MA in Central and South-East European Studies and PhD in Social Sciences at SSEES. He has since worked at St Mary’s University College in Twickenham, UCL School of Public Policy, Indiana University in the US and the Open University.
Jack Dean
Primarily focused on Central Europe, he takes an interdisciplinary approach to the region. Prior to this, he obtained his MA in Central and South East European Studies from UCL SSEES and his BA in European Politics from King's College London. His areas of research span the social sciences, taking an often interdisciplinary approach to the study of Europe. His research interests focus on several key themes: populism and populist rhetoric; political extremism and violence; the politics of health.
Ramona Gonczol
She convenes the PROLang interdisciplinary group and is the academic coordinator for the Language Short Courses programme at SSEES. She is the author of Romanian an Essential Grammar (2nd edition, 2020) and co-author of Colloquial Romanian 2014, 5th edition coming). Her research interests lie in the area of language acquisition, heritage languages and speakers, multicultural identities, language policy, multilingualism and ethnographic pedagogy.