Chair

The Ion Rațiu Chair is the first chair of Romanian studies in the world. The Ion Rațiu Chair of Romanian Studies at Georgetown University was established by Ion Rațiu in the late 1980s, as a center for research and academic excellence focusing on his native Romania in the city he saw as the capital of the free and democratic world. The Chair’s purpose is to expand knowledge of modern Romanian history, politics, and culture, and to provide the United States’ administration with specialists and resources on Romanian history and current realities. The endowment of the Ion Rațiu Chair of Romanian Studies was made through a Rațiu Family Foundation Grant.

Diana Dumitru is our current Visiting Ion Rațiu Professor of Romanian Studies. Her field of research includes the Holocaust in Eastern Europe, nationalism, and Jews under late Stalinism. Dr. Dumitru has held multiple fellowships that include a Woodrow Wilson Center’s Fellowship (USA), Gerda Henkel Stiftung Fellowship (Germany), Simone Wiesenthal Institute Visiting Researcher (Austria), and the Rosenzweig Family Fellowship for research at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum (USA). She has authored over forty academic articles and two books. Her second book, The State, Antisemitism and Collaboration in the Holocaust: The Borderlands of Romania and the Soviet Union, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2016. Together with Chad Bryant and Kateřina Čapková, she is currently working on a book titled “The Trial that Shook the World: The Slánský Process and the Dynamics of Czechoslovak Communism.” She is also writing a separate book focused on Jewish life in the Soviet Union after World War II. Dr. Dumitru is an editorial board member of the scholarly journals Holocaust and Genocide Studies, East European Jewish Affairs, and Journal of Genocide Research. She is a member of the Advisory Board of the EU-funded European Holocaust Research Infrastructure.

Dennis Deletant
Dennis Deletant was Visiting Ion Rațiu Professor of Romanian Studies at Georgetown University from 2011-2020. He was formerly Professor of Romanian Studies at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College, London, where he taught between 1969 and 2011, and held the same position at the University of Amsterdam (on secondment from UCL) between 2003 and 2010. He is the author of several monographs and volumes of studies on the recent history of Romania, among them Ceauşescu and the Securitate: Coercion and Dissent in Romania, 1965-89 (London; New York, 1996), Romania under Communist Rule (Bucharest, 1998), Communist Terror in Romania: Gheorghiu-Dej and the Police State, 1948-1965 (London; New York, 1999) and Ion Antonescu. Hitler’s Forgotten Ally (London; New York, 2006).

Charles King
Charles King was Visiting Ion Rațiu Professor of Romanian Studies at Georgetown University from 1995-2011 and is currently Professor of International Affairs and Government at Georgetown University. He lectures widely on international affairs, social violence, and ethnic politics, and has worked with major broadcast media such as CNN, National Public Radio, the BBC, the History Channel, and MTV. He previously served as chairman of the faculty of Georgetown’s Walsh School of Foreign Service.

He is the author of five books, including Odessa: Genius and Death in a City of Dreams (New Zork, 2011), The Ghost of Freedom: A History of the Caucasus (New York, 2008), The Black Sea: A History (New York, 2004), and The Moldovans: Romania, Russia, and the Politics of Culture (New York, 2000). His work has been translated into more than ten languages. King’s articles and commentary have appeared in magazines and newspapers such as Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, and The Times Literary Supplement, as well as in leading academic journals.

Gail Kligman
Gail Kligman was Visiting Ion Rațiu Professor of Romanian Studies at Georgetown University from 1992-1994 and is currently Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles. Previously a Professor of Anthropology with the University of Chicago and the University of Texas, Austin, her academic interests are political sociology, cultural anthropology and ethnology especially connected to Central and Eastern Europe. In the 1970s and 1980s she made numerous field and research studies in Romania and Maramureş in particular. Gail Kligman is member of the editorial board of several prestigious magazines: Slavic Review, East European Politics and Societies, Theory and Society, Sfera Politicii; she led numerous research projects at the Wilson Center, the Center for European Studies, Harvard University, the Center for Russian and East European Studies, University of California, Berkeley, and Collegium Budapest; and organized numerous conferences and colloquies. She is the author of numerous books, studies and articles, among them: Calus: Symbolic transformation in Romanian ritual (1981), The wedding of the dead: ritual, poetics, and popular culture in Transylvania (1988), The politics of gender after socialism (2000), and Reproducing gender: politics, publics, and everyday life after socialism (2000).