28.05.2025 / News
Făgăraș, May 28, 2025 – The Făgăraș Research Institute had the pleasure of hosting a group of students from the University of Pittsburgh, participants in the Pitt in Romania & Belgium 2025 study abroad program, led by Dr. Horia M. Dijmărescu, Teaching Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science. The students were welcomed on behalf of FRI by Ana Marica, Andreea Mihaela Buduru, Ioana Hașu-Georgiev, Georgi Georgiev, and Ștefan Cibian.
The day began at Calbor College, where students took part in a series of interactive workshops exploring topics such as Romania’s recent history, identity formation processes, and the legacy of the communist regime. Event hosts Ioana Hașu-Georgiev and Ștefan Cibian offered the participants a local perspective on collective memory, post-communist transition, and civic engagement in contemporary Romania.
Ioana Hașu-Georgiev, an accredited researcher and journalist with over 15 years of experience, presented lesser-known aspects of the anti-communist resistance in Romania, focusing on the role of women, transgenerational trauma, and the relationship between forgetting, memory, and healing. Her presentation aligned closely with the topics addressed in the Processes of Identity Formation course, having contextualized these themes within the broader framework of political and social transformations in Romania and Eastern Europe, exploring intersections between history and geopolitics.
Ana Marica shared her perspective related to cosmopolitan learning and decolonial practices, drawing on examples from alternative learning communities in Latin America. With a professional background at the intersection of learning design, organizational development, and social impact, Ana is on a mission to understand how communities can evolve for the better when self-directed learning principles are integrated into education.
Ștefan Cibian, the Institute’s Executive Director, focused on the economic, social, and political transformations experienced by communities in the Făgăraș region, with an emphasis on the development of civil society in recent years. He also presented the work of the Făgăraș Research Institute, with a particular focus on the development of the educational campus at Calbor.
In the afternoon, the students explored the city of Făgăraș, including the Făgăraș Fortress and the former industrial site “Combinat,” in a guided tour that connected physical places with lived and forgotten histories of the region.
The event concluded at Casa Terra Restaurant with a “communist dinner,” an immersive experience designed to offer both a symbolic and sensory taste of everyday life during the communist period in Romania. The dinner served as an immersive exercise in understanding the daily realities shaped by ideological control and scarcity.
Through such initiatives, the Făgăraș Research Institute continues to foster international academic exchange, connecting the past to the present, local expertise to global perspectives, academic inquiry to community experience.
FRI is glad to be part of this educational initiative and to contribute to the critical understanding of local history and identity in an international context. Many thanks to Prof. Dr. Horia M. Dijmărescu and the University of Pittsburgh for the opportunity.
Departments: The Research Department; The Educational Programs Department; Policy Analysis and Outreach Department; Center for Anti-Communist Resistance and History; Society, Crisis and Resilience.
Regions: Țara Făgărașului; Romania; North America.
Themes: Communism and Totalitarianism; Democracy and Democratization; Education; Freedom of Expression; Public Policy; Political Science; Social Science.