2023 Ion Ratiu Democracy Fellowship

At the Wilson Center, preeminent scholars and experts research topics of national and international relevance. In the spirit of President Wilson, the Center builds a bridge between the worlds of academia and public policy, to inform and develop solutions to the problems and challenges of the United States. Democracy is built on the notion of an informed and active citizenry. The Wilson Center provides the fuel that makes this possible.

 

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Ion Ratiu Democracy Award winner in 2014, Mustafa Nayyem, about the Ukrainian war

The Times article

 

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Ion Ratiu Visiting Professor of Romanian Studies at the Georgetown University

The Ratiu Foundation is pleased to report the Dr. Diana Dumitru has begun a three-year contract at Georgetown University as the Ion Ratiu Visiting Professor of Romanian Studies. She will develop courses in Eastern European studies with a substantial Romanian component that will treat the period from World War II through the post-communist present. During the 2021-22 academic year, Dr. Diana Dumitru was a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC. For two decades she has taught modern Romanian and East European history at the Ion Creangă State University in Chişinău, where she is currently Associate Professor. Among the courses she has taught are “Comparative Politics of East European Countries,” “Contemporary Eastern Europe,” “Modern Totalitarian Regimes,” and “Nations, Nationalism, and Ethno-Political Conflicts.” In 2019, Dumitru received the Honor Medal, the highest award at Ion Creangă State University for teaching excellence. Dr. Diana Dumitru is the author of two books and approximately 40 articles and book chapters in English and Romanian, many in leading peer-reviewed scholarly journals. Her first book, in Romanian, was Marea Britanie şi Unirea Principatelor Romane (1856-1859) [Great Britain and the Union of Romanian Principalities] (2010). Her second book, The State, Anti-Semitism, and Collaboration in the Holocaust: The Soviet-Romanian Borderlands was published by Cambridge University Press in 2016 and was a Finalist in the 2017 Yad Vashem International Book Prize. It was translated into Romanian as Vecini in vremuri de restriște. Stat, antisemitism și Holocaust in Basarabia și Transnistria (Iași: Polirom, 2019). She is currently finishing a third book co-authored with Chad Bryant and Kateřina Čapkova, The Trial that Shook the World: The Slanský Trial and the Dynamics of Czechoslovak Stalinism, which is under contract with Oxford University Press. Dr. Diana Dumitru has held many prestigious visiting and research positions around the world, as Black Sea Link Research Fellow, New Europe College, Bucharest in 2011-2012; as Gerstein Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Toronto in 2016; Research Fellow at the Imre Kertesz Kolleg Jena, 2017-2018; and as Fernand Braudel Fellow at the European University Institute, Florence in 2021.

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History

The Ratiu Family Charitable Foundation was established in London in 1979 by Ion and Elisabeth Rațiu to promote and support projects which further education and research in the culture and history of Romania, both in Romania and the UK.

Grants

The Foundation offers up to 100 annual grants, principally for projects, postgraduate courses, conference participations, travel grants, and other short term courses including academic research.

The Ratiu Grants are awarded to Romanian students to study a wide range of subjects in the UK. They enable talented graduates and young professionals to become familiar with the UK and gain skills, which they can adapt and apply in Romania. The Ratiu Foundation has to date supported Romanian students in a range of subjects including architecture, music, theatre, business, theology, philosophy, town planning, political studies, law, art, design, fashion design, archaeology, and ethnomusicology.

Projects

The Rațiu Foundation also offers annual seed funding for innovative projects, principally in Romania, which foster Romanian arts and civilisation, heritage, civil society, democracy, and environmental protection.

The projects supported by the Foundation are numerous, ranging from democracy awareness and civic participation to support for artists, designers and curators on voyages of self discovery. The Foundation has also been supportive of artists with problems of existence, day centres for the old and disadvantaged, prevention of human trafficking and research conducted by foreign researchers in Transylvania.

We proudly suported them!