Dr Doina Anca Cretu

ACADEMIC PROFILE

2024-: Assistant Professor in Modern European History, University of Warwick, UK

2023-2024: Visiting Lecturer, University of Vienna

2020-2024: Research Associate, Masaryk Institute and Archives of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague, Czech Republic (part of European Research Council Consolidator Grant "Unlikely Refuge? Refugees and Citizens in East-Central Europe during the Twentieth Century")

2019-2020: Max Weber Postdoctoral Fellow, European University Institute, Florence, Italy

2013-2018: PhD in International History and Politics, Graduate Institute Geneva, Switzerland

RESEARCH

I am a historian of modern Europe, working at the intersection of history of east-central Europe and international history. Thematically, my research centers on history of humanitarianism, history of development, and history of migration (esp. history of refugees). My first monograph, Foreign Aid and State Building in Interwar Romania: In Quest of an Ideal (Stanford University Press, 2024) looks at the case of Romania to explore ways national agendas of state making shaped trajectories of international humanitarianism and philanthropy in post-imperial east-central Europe.

I am currently working on a monograph tentatively titled Central Europe and the Making of a Modern Refugee Regime. It argues that the Habsburg lands of Central Europe functioned as a laboratory in which core “technologies” of displacement management were developed, tested, and circulated. This study explores how refugee categorisation, protection, and control emerged amid imperial collapse and political fragmentation in Central Europe during and after the First World War. Methodologically, the project follows three intertwining frameworks of analysis: (1) state policy making and formal agendas of refugee-oriented governance; (2) local, national, and transnational forms of humanitarian mobilization for refugees; (3) refugees' own experiences and subjectivities.

TEACHING

Convened Modules

The Displaced: Refugees in Modern Europe (1914-2015) (HI2L1)

Radical Politics and the Struggle for Democracy in Europe, 1918-1939 (HI276)

Various Lectures

Making of the Modern World (HI153)

Farewell to Arms? War in Modern European History, 1815-2015 (HI718)

Themes in Modern History (HI998)

Themes & Approaches to the Historical Study of Gender & Sexuality (HI996)

SUPERVISION

I welcome students interested in working on history of humanitarianism, history of development, history of (forced) migration, modern east-central Europe.

TEACHING QUALIFICATIONS

• Fellow of the Higher Education Academy
• Max Weber Teaching Certificate

PUBLICATIONS

Monograph

Foreign Aid and State Building in Interwar Romania: In Quest of an Ideal (Stanford University Press, 2024)

Edited Volume

Humanitarian Mobilisation in Central and Eastern Europe during the Twentieth Century: Local, National, and International Perspectives (co-edited with Michal Frankl; Manchester University Press, 2025)

Articles

• “War is destructive, but it reconstructs anew…:” Refugee Education and State Consolidation in Imperial Austria during the First World War,” Nationalities Papers, Special Issue: “Nation Building and the Habsburg Empire” (31 October 2024), 1-17.
• “ The American Red Cross and Visions of Rebuilding of the Balkans after the First World War,” Zeitgeschichte, Issue 3, Vol. 51, Special Issue: “To Help or Not to Help-Humanitarianism in the 20th Century” (2024), 313-333.
• “Childhood, Experience, Encampment: The Case of Italian-Speaking Refugees in Austria-Hungary during the First World War,” Journal of Contemporary History (13 June 2024), 1-19.
• “Child Assistance and the Making of Modern Refugee Camps in Austria-Hungary during the First World War,” Central European History, Vol. 55, Issue 4 (December 2022), 510-527.

• “The Nationalization of International Relief: Romanian Responses to American Aid for Children in the Great War Era,” European Review of History: Revue européene d’histoire, Vol. 27, No.4 (2020), 527-547

• “Health, Disease, Mortality; Demographic Effects,” International Encyclopedia of the First World War, 1914-1918 Online (17 November 2020).
• “Humanitarian Aid in the “Bulwark Against Bolshevism:” The American Relief Administration and the Quest for Sovereignty in Post-World War I Romania,” Journal of Romanian Studies, Vol. 1, No.2 (October 2019), 65-88.

Chapters

• “Jewish Refugees, Encampment, and the Humanitarian Paradox in Austria-Hungary during the First World War" (forthcoming Unlikely Refuge?, edited volume, Central European University Press).

• "Securitized Protection: Health Work and the Making of Refugee Camps in Wartime Austria-Hungary," in Out of Line, Out of Place: A Global and Local History of World War I Internments, eds. Rotem Kowner and Iris Rachamimov (Cornell University Press, 2022), 73-91.

• “For The “Youth of The Great Nation:’ The American YMCA and Nation-Building in Greater Romania in the Interwar Period," in Spreading Protestant Modernity: Global Perspectives on the Social Work of YMCA and YWCA, 1889-1970, eds. Harald Fischer-Tiné, Stefan Hübner, Ian Tyrrell (University of Hawaii Press, 2021), 160-190.

Podcasts:  Experiencing Epidemics Podcast, New Books Network Podcast, Central European University Press Review of Books Podcast

Other Publications (Selection)

• "Ebbs and Flows of International Aid and the Model of Interwar Eastern Europe: An Experimental Reflection," Current Affairs, Pierre Du Bois Foundation, October 2025.

• “Romania: Histories of Refugee Reception,” Current Affairs, Pierre Du Bois Foundation, July 2022.

• “Ukraine’s Refugees and the Muddy Waters of Humanitarian Aid: Some Early Thoughts,” New Fascism Syllabus Blog, 3 April 2022.

• Collaborator “Experience of Epidemics Podcast,” Episode 13: The World War, refugees, and the long history of epidemics, 9 November 2021.

• “A Regime of Immobility,” History Workshop Journal, 10 May 2021.

• “Epidemics and Europe’s Refugee Camps: A Tale of Two Eras,” Current Affairs, Pierre Du Bois Foundation, December 2020.

• “The Irony of Triumph: The Muddled Commemorations of Romania's Great Unification,” Current Affairs, Pierre Du Bois Foundation, November 2018.