Vlad Naumescu

Vlad Naumescu is an anthropologist of religion broadly interested in questions of learning and cultural transmission. He has conducted extensive fieldwork on religious transformation in postsocialist Western Ukraine (2003–2006), among Russian Old Believers in Romania (2007–2012), and among Syrian Christians in South India. These projects have led him to explore a range of related topics, including the pedagogies of prayer, the politics of memory, time and historicity, Cold War apologetics, religious orthodoxies, ethical traditions, and religious–secular formations in state socialism and beyond. His most recent research brings these cases together in a comparative analysis of the current transformations of global Orthodoxy.

His research interests have fostered collaborations across disciplines, helping him understand how socio-historical processes and psychological dispositions shape the evolution and transmission of religious phenomena. These collaborations contributed to the development of a pilot interdisciplinary doctoral training program on the Social Mind (SMASH and SMASH PRO), designed to prepare researchers skilled in cross-disciplinary work on the interrelations between cognition, culture, and human sociality.

Since joining CEU, he has also developed a strong interest in visual anthropology and documentary filmmaking. He has taught film courses and workshops and supervised visual works ranging from photo essays to documentary films and interactive cross-media projects. He is currently exploring the potential of new media to capture and visualize empirical data and to generate new modes of ethnographic storytelling. Much of this work has been channeled into the establishment of the Visual Studies Platform and the Advanced Certificate Program in Visual Theory and Practice at CEU.