We are pleased to announce that Prof. Vlad Naumescu has been awarded a three-year research grant as part of the international research project ‘Times in Crisis, Times of Crisis: The Temporalities of Europe in Polycrisis’ (TiCToC) funded by the HERA–CHANSE (Humanities in the European Research Area – Collaboration of Humanities and Social Sciences in Europe) program.
The project explores the temporalities of crisis, the vernacular articulation of life in turmoil, and the cultural dynamics expressed in crisis contexts. The central contention is the need to unravel what we term ‘times in/of crisis’. Centered in anthropology and working across history, ethnology, memory studies, art and philosophy, this project critically places time at the heart of crisis work, asking what it means to live in times of crisis, how crisis changes over time, and how crisis is perceived in hindsight. Critically, what distinguishes ‘crisis time’ from ‘normal time’?
Framing current conditions as ‘crisis’ or projecting time itself as being ‘in crisis’ are prevailing sensibilities in much discourse about polycrisis in Europe and beyond. This project offers empirical, methodological and theoretical apparatuses to better analyze what such crisis attentiveness effects, interrogating what the diverse yet now common category of ‘crisis’ accomplishes. The work packages addresses three temporal pins – past, present, and future, focusing on individual nodes of polycrisis in three regional settings: Eastern Europe (war and conflict), Mediterranean (economy), Scandinavia (migration), with shared research questions designed to aid comparison and comprehension. Naumescu’s work will contribute to understanding these dynamics through ethnographic research in a region deeply affected by the war in Ukraine.
The consortium includes universities and research institutes in Denmark, Norway, Austria, Czech Republic, Slovenia and the UK and collaborations with cultural and academic partners across Europe, including the National Museum of Denmark, EthnoFest, Open Society Archives, Post Bellum, Divadlo Feste, and the Slovene Ethnological Association.