How scouting contributes to a more differentiated picture of Central and Eastern European history

Romanian art historian Alexandra Chiriac is conducting research in Leipzig with a Humboldt Research Fellowship on transnational interconnections in the cultural history of Romania. Chiriac was deliberately brought to Leipzig by Humboldt Scout Maren Röger, Director of the Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe (GWZO). Despite all the dynamism in research on Central and Eastern Europe, the culture and history of this bridge country – between the Carpathians and the Balkans, the Danube and the Black Sea – remain insufficiently researched even 30 years after the end of the division of Europe into East and West. 

“Romania figures, when studying Central and Eastern Europe, often not prominently, due to our academic educational system, the traditions of the disciplines and the language knowledges needed,” Maren Röger explains. She had long wanted to give Romania more space in the institute’s focus. As a scout for the Humboldt Foundation’s Henriette Herz Scouting Programme, she can bring up to three postdocs to Leipzig to foster interdisciplinary research and expand the institute’s portfolio. 

Romania plays a special role

In Alexandra Chiriac, Röger found a researcher whose research focus on popular cultures and performance theory is highly innovative, strongly connected to own research interests and complements the themes of the department “interdependence and globalisation”. The art historian received her doctorate in St Andrews, Scotland, and has already published a monograph on experimental Yiddish theatre in Bucharest and its contribution to European modernism in the early 20th century.

Modernist avant-garde in South-Eastern Europe

Based in Leipzig, Chiriac is now researching how Black jazz musicians from the USA impacted artistic, social and political modernity in Romania during the interwar years of the 20th century. “It is little known that Black performers appeared in Bucharest at that time. You have to follow the traces of these individuals to see how diverse, transnational and transcultural Romania’s history is,” emphasises Alexandra Chiriac.

Germany had not been part of her career strategy until being scouted, but she is now grateful to be in Leipzig. “I now find myself in an environment full of experts who are really knowledgeable about the regions of Eastern and Central Europe and who are committed to painting an informed and nuanced picture of culture and history,” says Chiriac.

“I was thrilled when I heard about the Henriette Herz Scouting Programme,” recalls host Röger. “And I do very much agree with the requirement to nominate a woman first.” All requirements together – the sex, the years after graduation and the fact that the person should not have spent a longer time period in Germany – forces one to put aside the first name that comes to mind. “It’s really about thinking outside the box: scouting someone who meets the high-quality standards and with whom you haven’t worked before,” says Röger, explaining the requirements for scouting. The cultural scientist, who herself has researched memory culture in Poland, feels well supported by the Humboldt Foundation’s programme. 

Another advantage of the Henriette Herz Scouting Programme (sponsored by the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space) is the swift procedure. “People need planning security – after all, it’s about organising moves across national borders,” says Röger.

Alexandra Chiriac has now perfected her already excellent German. And so, from now on, Romania will also play a bigger role in the GWZO’s research. It all began with a wink in the winter semester of 2025/26 with the lecture series “In die Walachei...” on the modern history and culture of Romania. Alexandra Chiriac gave a lecture on transnational design and consumer culture in interwar Romania under the motto “‘Modernity’ – Between Bauhaus and Bucharest”. For the avant-garde of modernism was certainly not a Western European invention – and Romania was much more than a part of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy or a satellite state of Moscow, where the Securitate wreaked havoc under Ceaușescu.