Elitza Stanoeva

• Name: Elitza Stanoeva
• Email: elitza.stanoeva@former.eui.eu
• Position in HSSF: Member
• University position: Assistant Professor, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences – Institute of Philosophy and Sociology

2013 PhD in History, Technical University Berlin

2004 MA in History, Central European University, Budapest

2003 MA in Philosophy, Sofia University

• Books

Sofia: Ideology, Urban Planning and Life under Socialism. Sofia: Prosveta, 2016 [in Bulg.]

Sofia: The Socialist City in Its Monumental Vision and Practice. Berlin: Technical University, 2013 [published dissertation]

(with Dimitar Denkov and Vassil Vidinsky) Roma Schools in Bulgaria 2001. Sofia: Open Society Foundation, 2001 [in Bulg.]

• Abridged English version: Roma Schools: Bulgaria 2001. Sofia: Open Society Foundation, 2001

• Articles in peer-reviewed journals and collected volumes

Journal articles:

(with Sune Bechmann Pedersen) “Tourism diplomacy in the Cold War: Symbolic gestures, cultural exchange and human rights”, Contemporary European History 34:1 (2025): 125-41, DOI: 10.1017/S096077732400016X

“Squeezed between external trade barriers and internal economic problems:  Bulgaria’s trade with Denmark in the 1970s”, European Review of History: Revue européenne d’histoire 27:3 (2020): 390-411, DOI: 10.1080/13507486.2019.1663796

“Hypochondriac identities: Gender and nationalism in Bulgaria”, Sociological Problems 2/2018: 715-35 [in Bulg.]

“Ideology and urbanism in a flux: Making Sofia socialist in the Stalinist period and beyond”, Southeastern Europe 41:2/2017: 112-40, DOI: 10.1163/18763332-04102002

“Bulgarien: Politik der Nostalgie”, Transit: Europäische Revu 50/2017: 192-205

“Socialist trade in Bulgaria (1954-1963): Ideology, discipline and marketing”, Sociological Problems 3-4/2015: 228-49 [in Bulg.]

“The organization of socialist trade in Bulgaria, 1954-1963: Doctrinal contradictions and inter-institutional tensions”, Sociological Problems 1-2/2015: 111-33 [in Bulg.]

“Building the socialist city: Egalitarianism versus monumentalism?”, Critique & Humanism 42, 1-2/2013: 55-94 [in Bulg.]

“Paths of education”, Critique & Humanism 36, 1/2011: 299-306 [in Bulg.]

“The central city square as a legitimation resource: The main square of socialist Sofia”, Critique & Humanism 35, special issue/2010: 285-320

• Bulgarian version in Critique & Humanism 33, 3/2010: 111-38

“Football and the city: An extraordinary month in the life of Berlin”, Sociological Problems 3-4/2006: 114-30 [in Bulg.]

“A discourse on city modernization: The construction of the tram network in Sofia (1901-1934)”, Critique & Humanism 20, 1/2005: 259-82 [in Bulg.]

“The Market Hall in the modern topology of Sofia: Symbolic and social-political projections”, Sociological Problems 3-4/2004: 289-306 [in Bulg.]

 

Non-peer reviewed articles:

“Postwar economic relations between Eastern and Western Europe: From Cold War confrontation to détente cooperation”, in Julia Rone, Emilija Tudjarovska and Eli Gateva (eds), Comparative Politics of Central and Eastern Europe: A Handbook. London: Bloomsbury (forthcoming 2026)

“The socialist city: Urbanism under state ownership and central planning”, in Dorothee Brantz and Gábor Sonkoly (eds), The Cambridge Urban History of Europe, vol. 3 “Modern and Contemporary Europe”, pp.302-321. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2025

“Balancing between socialist internationalism and economic internationalization: Bulgaria’s economic contacts with the EEC”, in Angela Romano and Federico Romero (eds), European Socialist Regimes’ Fateful Engagement with the West: National Strategies in the Long 1970s, pp.159-89. London: Routledge, 2021

“The imperative of opening to the West and the impact of the 1968 crisis: Bulgaria’s cooperation with Denmark and West Germany in the 1960s”, in Laurien Crump and Susanna Erlandsson (eds), Margins for Manoeuvre in Cold War Europe: The Influence of Smaller Powers, pp.110-29. London: Routledge, 2020

“Exporting holidays: Bulgarian international tourism and the Scandinavian market in the 1960s and 1970s”, in Sune Bechmann Pedersen and Christian Noack (eds), Tourism and Travel during the Cold War: Negotiating Tourist Experiences across the Iron Curtain, pp.23-46. London: Routledge, 2020

(with Maren Behrensen) “Hypochondriac identities: Gender and nationalism in Bulgaria and Germany”, in Marianne Heimbach-Steins, Maren Behrensen and Linda Hennig (Hgs), Gender – Nation – Religion. Ein internationaler Vergleich von Akteursstrategien und Diskursverflechtungen, pp.147-88. Frankfurt/New York: Campus-Verlag, 2019

“Inventing the socialist consumer: Worker, citizen or customer? Politics of mass consumption in Bulgaria, 1954-1960”, in Krzysztof Brzechczyn (ed), New Perspectives in Transnational History of Communism in East Central Europe, pp.171-98. Berlin: Peter Lang, 2019

• Polish trans. in Krzysztof Brzechczyn (red), Nowe perspektywy badawcze w transnarodowej historii komunizmu w Europie srodkowo-wschodniej, pp.137-59. Warsaw: IPN, 2019

(with Tom Junes) “Todor C. Schiwkow (1911-1998): Bulgarischer Kommunismus zwischen nationaler Unabhängigkeit und Loyalität gegenüber der Sowjetunion”, in Martin Sabrow and Susanne Schattenberg (Hgs), Die letzten Generalsekretäre: Kommunistische Herrschaft im Spätsozialismus, pp.37-63. Berlin: Ch. Links, 2018

“Architectural praxis in Sofia: The changing perception of ‘Oriental’ urbanity and ‘European’ urbanism (1879-1940)”, in Jan C. Behrends and Martin Kohlrausch (eds), Races to Modernity: Metropolitan Aspirations in Eastern Europe, 1890-1940, pp. 177-201. Budapest: CEU Press, 2014

“Abreast with the times: Two monuments of socialism in their own time”, in Milena Iakimova, Petya Kabakchieva, Marina Liakova and Veronica Dimitrova (eds), Following the Steps of the Other: A Collection in Honor of Maya Grekova, pp.240-52. Sofia: Prosveta, 2014 [in Bulg.]

“Interpretations of the Ottoman urban legacy in the national capital building of Sofia (1878-1940)”, in Eyal Ginio and Karl Kaser (eds), Ottoman Legacies in the Contemporary Mediterranean: The Balkans and the Middle East Compared, pp.209-230. Jerusalem: European Forum at the Hebrew University, 2013

“Sofia”, in Emily G. Makas and Tanja D. Conley (eds), Capital Cities in the Aftermath of Empires: Planning Central and Southeastern Europe, pp.91-107. London: Routledge, 2010

“Socio-cultural dimensions of urban mass transportation: The introduction of trams in Sofia (1901-1916)”, in Aneta Svetieva and Ana Ashtalkovska (eds), Social and Spiritual Aspects of Material Culture, pp.498-511. Skopje: Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, 2009

 

Online academic publications:

Stanoeva, E. Bulgaria’s Post-1989 Demostalgie, Eurozine, 31/08/2017

Stanoeva, E. Bulgaria’s 1,300 Years and East Berlin’s 750 Years: Comparing National and International Objectives of Socialist Anniversaries in the 1980s, CAS Working Paper Series 9/2017: 3-40

Stanoeva, E. Illiberal Consensus without an Authoritarian Core: The Case of Bulgaria, Cultures of History Forum, 12/09/2017

Stanoeva, E. The Dead Body of the Leader as an Organizing Principle of Socialist Public Space: The Mausoleum of Georgi Dimitrov in Sofia, in Maren Behrensen, Lois Lee and Ahmet S. Tekelioglu (eds.), Modernities Revisited. Vienna: IWM Junior Visiting Fellows’ Conference, 2011

 

Reviews

2014 Conference “Contradictions of the legacy: a virtual museum of socialism (7-9 March 2014, Plovdiv), Sociological Problems 3-4, pp. 392-396 [in Bulgarian]

2012 Needed by Nobody: Homelessness and Humanness in Post-Socialist Russia – by Tova Höjdestrand, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 36, pp. 206-207

2010 Crisis Management Without Reforms. Monthly Lecture of Lajos Bokros. IWMpost, 103, р.5.

2004 International Atelier for Photo and Video Documentaries Visual Roads for the Intercultural Dialogue. Sociological Problems, 3-4, рр.394-7 [in Bulgarian]

2004 Visual Roads for the Intercultural Dialogue. Kultura, 45, р.2 [in Bulgarian]

2016 (March – July)   junior fellow within Advanced Academia Program, Centre for Advanced Study, Sofia

2015 (June – August) Young Eastern European Fellowship, Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung, Potsdam

2014-2015 (April 2014 – March 2015) fellowship at Exzellenzcluster “Kulturelle Grundlagen von Integration,” Kulturwissenschaftliches Kolleg, Konstanz University

2011-2012 (November 2011 – April 2012) Tsvetan Stoyanov Fellowship, Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen, Vienna

2010 (January – June) Paul Celan visiting fellowship for translators, Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen, Vienna

2008 (March – June) doctoral support grant from Dr. Egon und Hildegard Diener-Stiftung

2008 (February – March) doctoral support grant from FAZIT Stiftung

2007 (September) grant for the summer school “Comparative and Trans-National Approaches to the History of Early Modern and Modern Europe: Theories, Methodology and Historical Case Studies,” European University Institute, Florence

2006 (March – May) visiting fellowship at Berliner Kolleg für vergleichende Geschichte Europas, Free University, Berlin

2005-2006 (December 2005 – February 2006) visiting fellowship in „Eliten Wandel“ project at Geisteswissenschaftliches Zentrum Geschichte und Kultur Ostmitteleuropas, Leipzig

2006-2007 (June 2006 – December 2007) doctoral fellowship from the German Research Association (DFG) at the Transatlantic Graduate Research Program Berlin – New York “History and Culture of Metropolis in the 20^th century,” Center for Metropolitan Studies, Berlin

2005 (January – September) octoral fellowship from the German Research Association (DFG) at the Transatlantic Graduate Research Program Berlin – New York “History and Culture of Metropolis in the 20^th century,” Center for Metropolitan Studies, Berlin

2003-2004 (September 2003 – June 2004) full MA scholarship, Central European University, Budapest

2000-2001 (October 2000 – June 2001) academic award grant from the Open Society Foundation – Sofia for a  project in humanities

1999-2000 (October 1999 – June 2000) academic award grant from the Open Society Foundation – Sofia for a  project in humanities

Urban studies; Cold War history; Historical sociology of socialism

Urbanization and city development in Central and Eastern Europe in socialism and post-socialism; Monuments and visual propaganda of socialism; Socialist celebrations and anniversaries; State bureaucracy and institutional dynamics under socialism; Command economy of socialism; Socialist trade and consumption;