Healing European Patrimony — hospitals, health and heritage
Research developed and coordinated by Oana Șerban.
The interdisciplinary project “Healing European Patrimony” investigates monument hospitals — historic buildings that house functioning or temporarily closed hospitals and that constitute forms of tangible cultural heritage exposed to degradation and abandonment for lack of sustainable means of conservation and restoration.
Phase 1 (2019–2020) — Healing Romanian Patrimony: Hospitals, Health and Heritage. The research inventoried 24 monument hospitals in Romania (among them the Neurology Hospital in the Haller Bastion, Sibiu; Colțea Hospital; St. Spiridon Hospital, Iași; the Bucharest Military Hospital), reconstructing their cultural and medical memory and analysing the dynamics of the buildings’ conversion — from their initial functions (monasteries, barracks, protocol residences) to their medical ones. The project had two components: a main cultural product (the first documentary film dedicated to the monument hospitals of Romania, combining theoretical research and empirical field research) and advocacy campaigns addressed to the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Health for public policies converting non-functional historic hospitals into medical museums.
Phase 2 (2020–2021) — Healing European Cultural Heritage: Hospitals, Health and Heritage. The research extended to the network of monument hospitals in the Black Sea region — from the Dr. Carol Davila Hospital (inspired by the model of the Ospedale di S. Lazzaro e Medicanti in Venice) to examples from Sevastopol, Krasnodar, Kavala, Izmail and Edirne — with the objective of building a European network of experts and of supporting the inscription of these landmarks on the UNESCO World Heritage List and, respectively, of traditional medical practices on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage.
Documented results: the article “Healing the Black Sea’s Patrimony: Hospitals, Health and Heritage”, published by Oana Șerban in Balkan Journal of Philosophy 12 (2): 125–132 (2020); the international conference “SAFEGUARDING LIFE: Cultural and Biopolitical Perspectives on Patrimony. First edition: Hospitals-Monuments as (In)Tangible Forms of Cultural Heritage at the Black Sea”, accompanied by an experts’ meeting for the identification of cooperation and funding mechanisms (post 967). The results are also presented publicly in media appearances (the interview on the monument hospitals, post 971).
[TO BE COMPLETED: the project’s funding institution and institutional partners; the current status (2026) of the monument-hospital network; the state of progress of the documentary film.]
Culture and Value in Late Modernity
An inter-academic research project (“The Approach of the Process Ontology through Art and Values in Knowledge-Based Societies”), carried out in international academic collaboration. Within the project, the international conference “Identity and Diversity in Contemporary Culture – Process Philosophy Approaches” was organised (Bucharest, Faculty of Philosophy, 23–24 September 2016), dedicated to the tensions between systems of values in contemporary societies marked by migration, technology and artificial intelligence.
[TO BE COMPLETED: the project’s international institutional partners and its current status.]
The European research network and mobilities
Through its activity, the Centre has hosted invited researchers and doctoral candidates from European universities (among them the University of Verona and the University of Gothenburg) and has facilitated academic exchanges with institutions across Europe. The Centre’s statute explicitly provides for international cooperation (art. 10–11), including master’s and doctoral programmes in co-tutelle.
[TO BE COMPLETED: active international cooperation agreements, if any; recent mobilities and visits.]