Ionela Zaharia-Schintler

Ionela Zaharia is research fellow (PostDoc) at the Chair for Southeastern European History and Anthropology (Institute of History) at University of Graz. She is current working in the research project “Between Fear and Hope. Rural Perspectives in the Era of Great War” funded by the FWF (Austrian Science Fund).

Curriculum Vitae – Mag. Dr. Ionela Zaharia

Ionela Zaharia studied History and Archival Science at the Babeș-Bolyai University of Cluj-Napoca / Klausenburg, Romania. 2016 she received her doctoral degree in the field of History from Babeș-Bolyai University with a doctoral thesis on “Clerul militar român din Austro-Ungaria în Marele Război (The Romanian Military Clergy from Austria-Hungary during the Great War)”. For research on her doctoral thesis topic she was awarded with two research scholarships (“Ernst Mach” from OeAD and “Johann Weber” from the Bischof-Johann-Weber-Foundation – Catholic Church Styria). The subsequent research visits were supervised by Prof.i.R. Dr.h.c.mult. Dr.phil. Harald Heppner.

Between 2015 and 2017 she worked as a research fellow in the research team investigating the “War Propaganda and the Romanian Churches in Transylvania”, a project funded by the Romanian Authority for Research and Innovation CNCS – UEFISCDI. This project offered her the opportunity to scrutinize extensively the relations between authorities, local elites, soldiers, the process of national identity formation in the Transylvanian rural society, as well as the repercussions of the First World War on mentalities and emotions.

Since 2011 she has attended conferences and workshops in Romania, Austria, Ireland, Portugal, Ukraine and Poland, and has published several articles in Romanian, German, English and Polish.

Areas of Research and Teaching:

Ionela Zaharia´s research areas include Religious and Cultural History of the First World War, War Propaganda in the First World War, Romanian Diplomacy in the 19th and 20th centuries, History of Emotions in the 19th and 20th centuries, especially in the territory of Austria-Hungary and Southeastern Europe.

Current research:

“Between Fear and Hope. Rural Perspectives in the Era of the Great War”.

The aim of the project, which is based at the University of Graz, is to render a series of features which are valid for more than the selected rural and peripheral case studies from Slovenia and Transylvania, and are analyzed on three comparison levels, using an anthropological and micro-historical approach. The spatial comparison refers to the two said regions, each with its respectively different rural structures. The temporal comparison has the purpose of confronting the pre-war, the war and the post-war period, which had different values for the addressed generations. The thematic comparison refers to the interplay between fear and hope that the rural population had to endure, and which inevitably produced winners and losers in the face of radical change in the era of the Great War.

Recent Publications:

Zaharia,Ionela,“Între războaiele culturale și cultura războiului. Viața cotidiană a soldaților români tranilvăneni din Armata Austro-Ungară în Marele Război.” Războiul de fiecare zi. Viața cotidiană în tranșee și în spatele frontului în Primul Război Mondial (1914-1919). eds. Bogdan Popa, Radu Tudorancea. Târgoviște: Editura: Cetatea de Scaun, 2018. 135-147.

Zaharia, Ionela,“Preoţii militari români ortodocşi la sfârşitul anului 1918. Studiu de caz: situaţia din oraşul Cluj.“ Prezenţe clericale transilvănene la Marea Unire de la Alba Iulia 1 Decembrie 1918. eds. Cosmin Cosmuţa, Andreea Dăncilă-Ineoan, Emanuil Ineoan, Bogdan Ivanov. Cluj-Napoca: Editura: Renașterea, 2018. 71-91.

Zaharia, Ionela, “War Propaganda: A Duty to the Nation and the Emperor. ASTRA and the Military Clergy during the Great War.“ Persuading Minds. Propaganda and Mobilisation in Transylvania during World War I. eds. Ana Victoria Sima, Teodora Alexandra Mihalache. Berlin: Peter Lang Verlag, 2018. 61-80. DOI:https://doi.org/10.3726/b12667

Research Profile