Responsibilities
Publishing studies, attending international conferences and giving occasional lectures.
Competences
Mihai's areas of research include the medieval Baltic, focusing on conversion, missionary strategy, missionary Christian identity, hagiography, canon law, forced conversion, crusading, Christian kingship, otherness, and the religious beliefs and ritual practices of the Wends.
CV
Date of birth: April 26, 1988
Nationality: Romanian
Degrees:
2018: PhD in Medieval Studies (EQF level 8), School of Advanced Studies of the Romanian Academy (SCOSAAR), “Nicolae Iorga” Institute of History, Bucharest
2013: Interdisciplinary MA in Medieval studies (EQF level 7), Faculty of History; Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, University of Bucharest
2011: BA in History (EQF level 6), Faculty of History, University of Bucharest
Research experience:
July-August 2021: Short-term postdoctoral scholarship at the Faculty of Theology, University of Copenhagen. The project “German-Danish Colonization in Pomerania and Rügen during the second half of the twelfth century” was implemented through a grant offered by the Lozovan Foundation in Copenhagen.
February – June 2021: Short-term postdoctoral scholarship at the Comenius University in Bratislava. The project “Hippomancy in the Baltic Region: Desacralization of the Pomeranian Sacred Horses in the Twelfth Century” was implemented through the National Scholarship Programme of the Slovak Republic for the Support of Mobility of Students, PhD Students, University Teachers, Researchers and Artists, managed by SAIA and funded by the Ministry of Education, Science, Research and Sport of the Slovak Republic.
Oct. 2019, Feb. 2020, June-July 2021. Short-term postdoctoral scholarship at the Faculty of Catholic Theology of the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz. The scholarship was supported by the EU funded project “Research Infrastructure on Religious Studies – ReIReS” (Scholarships for Transnational Access), grant agreement ID: 730895. Titles of the projects: “Linguistic Interactions Between Germans and Wends in the Second Half of the Tenth Century”; “Crusade and Colonization in the Wendish Territory during the Twelfth Century”; “Constructions of Christian Identity in the Northern Periphery: The Sawley World Map in Twelfth-Century England”.
2018-2019: Short-term postdoctoral fellowship at the Institute of History and Archeology (University of Tartu), funded by the Romanian Cultural Institute - 'Lucian Blaga' Fellowship, no.7177 / 29.05.2018. Title of the project: “How to Justify a Crusade. The Conquest of the Region East of the Elbe and New Crusade Rhetoric in the Twelfth Century”.
2015: Short-term research mobility for PhD at the Institute of Medieval Studies from the School of History, University of Leeds (UK)
2014-2015: Scholarship for Doctoral studies "MINERVA - Cooperare for elite career in doctoral and postdoctoral research", contract: POSDRU/159/1.5/S/ 137832, "Nicolae Iorga" Institute of History, Bucharest, Romanian Academy.
Membership in academic and professional bodies and other activities:
Series Editor for "South-East European History" (Peter Lang)
Series Editor for "Christianity and Conversion in Scandinavia and the Baltic Region, c. 800-1600" (Peter Lang)
Contributor to the International Medieval Bibliography and the International Bibliography of Humanism and the Renaissance, published by Brepols
Member of the Editorial Board of the following journals: Romanian Journal for Baltic and Nordic Studies, published by the Romanian Association for Baltic and Nordic Studies; Journal of Ottoman Legacy Studies, published by the International Symposium on Balkan History Studies Committee (UBTAK), Res novae, published by the Catholic Institute in Ljubljana, Croatica Christiana Periodica, published by the Institute of Church History, Catholic Faculty of Theology, University of Zagreb
Member in the Editorial Advisory Board (History), Cambridge Scholars Publishing, UK, Editor at Trivent Publishing, Budapest, referee for history at Etnologică Publishing, Bucharest
Member of the Romanian Association of Slavic Studies (from 2016), Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East (from 2019), Institute for National and International Security (from 2021), Centre of Urban History, University of Hradec Králové (from 2021), Waldemar Ceran Research Centre for the History and Culture of the Mediterranean Area and South-East Europe, University of Łódź (from 2022).
Publications
Selected publications
Books (short and long form monographs)
Christian Identity Formation Across the Elbe in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries (New York: Peter Lang, 2021), reviewed in English by David Kalhous, Historia Slavorum Occidentis, Vol. 1, No. 32 (2022): 186-188 and Tomislav Galović, Journal of the Institute of Croatian History, Vol. 53, No. 2 (2021): 316-318, in Czech by Jaroslav Vokoun, Studia Theologica, Vol. 23, No. 4 (2021): 155-157, in Slovenian by Simon Malmenvall, Bogoslovni vestnik, Vol. 81, No. 1 (2021): 250-252.
The Wendish Crusade, 1147: The Development of Crusading Ideology in the Twelfth Century (London: Routledge, 2019), reviewed in Polish by Marian Dygo, Zapiski Historyczne, Vol. 86, No. 2 (2021): 161-166, in German by Hermann Kamp, German Historical Institute London Bulletin, Vol. 42, No. 2 (2020): 33-37 and English by Carole Cusack, Journal of Religious History, Vol. 44, Issue 4 (2020): 516-518.
Mission and Crusade in the Wendish Territory, 12th Century (in Romanian) (Bucharest: Etnologică, 2019), reviewed in Italian by Marco Cassioli, “Transylvanian Review”, Vol. XXIX, No. 2 (2020): 152-154.
Studies in edited volumes
"Mental Geographies and Cultural Identities in the Baltic Region in the Eleventh Century: the Anglo-Saxon Cotton World Map" in History, Culture, Research, Vol. III, eds. Dumitru-Cătălin Rogojanu, Gherghina Boda (Târgoviște: Cetatea de Scaun, 2019): 13-28.
“Otto of Bamberg: Monastic Reform and Apostolic Mission” (in Romanian) in Time, Society and Cultural Identity. ‘Historical Miniatures’, eds. Ileana Căzan, Bogdan Mateescu (Cluj-Napoca: Academia Română-Centrul de Studii Transilvane, 2015), 25-48.
Edited volumes
The various faces of Islamic radicalization in the Balkans after the fall of Communism, eds. Mihai Dragnea, Adriana Cupcea, Darko Trifunovic, John Nomikos, Joseph Fitsanakis (New York: Peter Lang, 2022) (forthcoming)
The Romance-Speaking Balkans Language and the Politics of Identity, eds. Annemarie Sorescu-Marinković, Mihai Dragnea, Thede Kahl, Blagovest Njagulov, Donald L. Dyer, and Angelo Costanzo (Leiden: Brill, 2021).
Scholarly journal articles
“Mobility, settlement and colonization on Rügen in the second half of the twelfth century”, Slavonic Review, 108/2 (2022) (forthcoming).
“Entre obéissance et apostasie. La conversion des Poméraniens au christianisme (XIIe siècle)”, Cahiers de civilisation médiévale, 258 (2022): 113-130.
“The Christian Attitude to Hippomancy in Twelfth-Century Szczecin”, International Journal of Divination and Prognostication, 3/2 (2021): 204-233.
“Legitimate and Illegitimate Divination in Medieval Writings”, Croatica Christiana Periodica, 46/89 (2022): 41-57.
“Shaping Religious Identity on the Northern Edge of the Christianitas: Portraits of Pagans and Idolaters in the Twelfth Century Pomerania”, Edinost in dialog (“Unity and Dialogue”) 76/2 (2021): 241-271.
“Constructions of Christian Identity in the Northern Periphery: The Sawley World Map in Twelfth-Century England”, The Journal of Ecclesiastical History 72/4 (2021): 726-750.
“Crusade and Colonization in the Wendish Territories in the Early Twelfth Century: An Analysis of the So-called Magdeburg Letter of 1108”, Mediaevalia 42 (2021): 41-61.
“The Cult of St. Olaf in the Latin and Greek Churches Between the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries”, Hiperboreea, 7/2 (2020): 145-167.
“Verbal and Non-Verbal Communication Between Germans and Wends in the Second Half of the Tenth Century”, Journal of the Institute of Latvian History, 2/110 (2019): 5-33.
"The Saxon expeditions against the Wends and the foundation of Magdeburg during Otto I's reign", The Romanian Journal for Baltic and Nordic Studies, 11/2 (2019): 7-34.
"Divine Vengeance and Human Justice in the Wendish Crusade of 1147", Collegium Medievale, 29 (2016): 49-82.
Book reviews
Janos M. Bak and Pavlína Rychterová (eds.), Martyn Rady and Petra Mutlová (trans.), Cosmas Pragensis Chronica Bohemorum, Budapest; New York, Central European University Press, 2020 in Hiperboreea, 8/2 (2021), 271-274.
Laura E. Wangerin, Kingship and Justice in the Ottonian Empire (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2019) in Central European History, 54/1 (2021): 187-188.