Our LEON FERARU CONFERENCES ONLINE continued on April 29, 2020 with an exploration of the role played by religion and religious affairs in the Romanian-American diplomatic relations during the Cold War, in the company of historian and academic, Dr. ANCA ȘINCAN, one of the principal Romanian experts in the complicated and often tragic interplay of religious and political affairs during the communist dictatorship. While examining how faith and the Christian denominations on both side of the Atlantic impacted diplomacy between Romania and the United States, we didn’t miss the opportunity to take a closer look at the vagaries of faith in a time of activist atheism and anti-clerical repression.
ANCA ȘINCAN has a Ph.D. in history from Central European University in Budapest, Hungary with a research on religion in communist Romania. She completed her academic training at Padova University, Oxford University, the European History Institute in Mainz, and New Europe College in Bucharest. Her research interests revolve around recent history of East Central Europe, history of historical writing, memory and remembrance, church history, religion and politics on which she published articles and book chapters. She took part as an expert in the Presidential Commission for the Study of the Communist Dictatorship in Romania for the chapterChurch/ Religious Denominations under Communism. She held research fellowships at Central European University, Budapest, Woodrow Wilson Center, Washington D.C., and the Polish Academy Institute for Advanced Studies in Warsaw. She teaches courses at the History Department at George E. Palade University in Târgu-Mureș and was a guest lecturer at the Religious Studies Program and History Department at Central European University. She is a researcher at the “Gheorghe Șincai” Institute for Social Sciences and Humanities of the Romanian Academy in Târgu-Mureș.Currently she is a researcher on the projectCreative Agency and Religious Minorities: Hidden Galleries in the Secret Police Archives in Central and Eastern Europe (Hidden Galleries) at University College Cork (Ireland).