Scientific career
Associate Researcher – Department of Business, History and Social Sciences, School of Business, University of South-Eastern Norway (January 2020 – present)
Research interests
Medieval Saxony and the Slavic areas beyond the Elbe, focusing on conversion, missionary strategy, Christian and pagan identity, religious beliefs and ritual practices, hagiography, canon law, crusading, Christian kingship, monastic orders, mobility and settlement, Slavic-Scandinavian relations during the Viking Age, Slavic ethnic identity and state formation as well as ethnicity and conflict in the Balkans.
mihaidragnea2018@gmail.com
Education
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
2023-2024. Long-term postdoctoral scholarship at the Department of Slovak History, Comenius University Bratislava. The project “Conquest, Holy War, and Crusade in the so-called Magdeburg Letter of 1108” 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.
2023. Short-term postdoctoral fellowship at the Department of Church History, Catholic Faculty of Theology, University of Zagreb, funded by the Romanian Cultural Institute (‘Lucian Blaga’ Fellowship). Title of the project: “Emotional Memory and Religious Identity in the Saxon Marches (10th-11th centuries)”.
2023. Short-term postdoctoral scholarship at the Department of Church History, Faculty of Theology, University of Copenhagen. The project “Cistercian abbeys in Pomerania and their impact on colonization in the second half of the twelfth century” was implemented through a grant offered by the Eugen Lozovan Foundation in Copenhagen.
2021: Short-term postdoctoral scholarship at the Faculty of Theology, University of Copenhagen. The project “German-Danish Colonization on Rügen during the second half of the twelfth century” was implemented through a grant offered by the Lozovan Foundation in Copenhagen.
2021: Short-term postdoctoral scholarship at the Comenius University 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.
2019, 2020, 2021. Short-term postdoctoral scholarships 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 bodies and editorial boards
Editor-in-chief of Hiperboreea, published by the Pennsylvania State University Press
Series Editor for “South-East European History” (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 (since 2020), published by the Romanian Association for Baltic and Nordic Studies; Res novae (since 2022), published by the Catholic Institute in Ljubljana, Croatica Christiana Periodica (since 2022), published by the Institute of Church History, Catholic Faculty of Theology, University of Zagreb, International Journal of Divination and Prognostication (since 2022), published by Brill in close cooperation with the Society for the Critical Study of Divination, East European Historical Bulletin (since 2024), published by Drohobych Ivan Franko State Pedagogical University, Ukraine.
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).
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)
The Wendish Crusade, 1147: The Development of Crusading Ideology in the Twelfth Century (London: Routledge, 2019)
Mission and Crusade in the Wendish Territory, 12th Century (in Romanian) (Bucharest: Etnologică, 2019)
Edited volumes
Islamic Culture and Pre-Islamic Beliefs in Central Asia, eds. Mihai Dragnea, Dorina Dragnea, Antonio Alonso Marcos (Lexington: Lanham, 2024)
Aspects of Islamic Radicalization in the Balkans After the Fall of Communism, eds. Mihai Dragnea, Joseph Fitsanakis, Darko Trifunovic, John Nomikos, Vasko Stamevski, Adriana Cupcea (New York: Peter Lang, 2023)
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
“Constructing ideas of being pagan in Eastern Saxony in relation to rebellion and apostasy beyond the Elbe (10th-11th centuries)”, Konštantínove listy (“Constantine’s Letters”), 17/2 (2024): 15-30.
“Conquest, holy war, and crusade. The plan of the military campaign against the Slavs. A new interpretation of the so-called Magdeburg Letter of 1108”, Slavia Antiqua, 65 (2024): 247-262.
“Emotional Memory and Religious Identity in the Saxon Marches (10th–11th centuries)”, Český časopis historický (“The Czech Historical Review”), 122/2 (2024): 227-249.
“Mobility, settlement and colonization on Rügen in the second half of the twelfth century”, Slovanský přehled (“Slavonic Review”), 108/2 (2022): 227-248.
“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.
Co-authored articles
With Anca Libidov, “Notes of Hadji Neilos”, Hilandarski zbornik, 65 (2024): 183-190.
Polemic essays
A response to a book review of Mihai Dragnea’s Christian Identity Formation Across the Elbe in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries, New York: Peter Lang 2021, written by Kurt V. Jensen and published in Crusades 21/1 (2022) in Studia Antiquitatis et Medii Aevi Incohantis (SAMAI), 9 (2024): 189-192.
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.
Latest conferences
Cistercian abbeys in Pomerania and their impact on colonization in the second half of the twelfth century at the 3rd Jómsborg Conference (“Eystra Salt – the Baltic Zone in the Literatures of the Medieval North”), organized by the Centre for Nordic and Old English Studies of the University of Silesia in Katowice and the Andrzej Kaube Regional Museum in Wolin, 19-20 May, 2023.
Conquest, Holy War, and Crusade in the so-called Magdeburg Letter of 1108 at the International Conference “Exegesis, Sermons, Liturgy: New Pathways in Crusade Studies”, organized by Heidelberg University in partnership with Swansea University and supported by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), 3-4 November 2022 (online, via Zoom).
Member of the organizing committee of international conferences and session chair
“Common past—divided memories”, Thessaloniki, 29 November – 1 December 2024, organized by the Department of Balkan, Slavic and Oriental Studies, University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki, the Department of History, Faculty of Law and History, South-West University “Neofit Rilski”, Blagoevgrad, the History Laboratory of the Department of Balkan, Slavic and Oriental Studies, University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki, and the Balkan History Association.
“Old Cities, Former Capitals and the Nation-State Building in Europe (18th-20th Centuries): Regional and National Identities”, Iași, November 19-21, 2024, organized by the Center for the History of International Relations (CIRI), within the Faculty of History from “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University of Iași, Universidad Salamanca and Balkan History Association.
“History, Culture and Research III”, Deva, November 1-2, 2019, organized by the Museum of Dacian and Roman Civilization in Deva, Romania, and the Balkan History Association.
Conferences, workshops and roundtable discussions (as a participant or guest)
October 2023 – The 8th Zagreb Security Forum (“Transatlantic Cooperation and New Security Architecture”), conference organized by the Hybrid Warfare Research Institute (Croatia) and St. George Association (Croatia) in partnership with the University of Defense and Security “Franjo Tuđman” (Croatia) and other institutions.
September 2018 – “Bucharest Security Conference” about the present evolution of the security environment of the NATO’s Easter Flank (Bucharest 9 Format, a cooperation initiative). The international conference held on 27-29 September was organized by NUPSPA (SNSPA).
May 2018 – International workshop about the digital tools that are used to fight fake news and disinformation “TechCamp Follow-on”, organized by the Digital Communication Network at the Romanian-American University from Bucharest.
April 2018 – International workshop on combating fake news on the Internet “TechCamp RO_MD – Digital Tricks”, organized by the Chamber of Excellence in International Affairs (CEIA), the Independent Analytical Center “Spirit Critic” from Chisinau and the Information and Documentation Centre on NATO in Moldova (CID NATO). Partners: U.S. Department of State and Digital Communication Network.
November 2016 – Conference entitled “Romania’s Position on the South-Eastern Flank of NATO”, organized by the Security Studies Group (GSS) at the Romanian-American University in Bucharest.