Gender and Refugeedom in Romania during World War I

Liana Popa, PhD project (Vienna): Gender and Refugeedom in Romania during World War I: Mass Exodus from Wallachia after the Occupation of the Central Powers (working title)

This project seeks to reconstruct individual and collective experiences of female refugees in WWI Romania and uncover facettes of their migration, refugee practices, survival, and everyday lives. The aim of the dissertation is to show how female refugees shaped the war landscapes and actively participated in war-related social, political and environmental changes as historical agents. Moreover, the analysis of war photographs seeks to reveal the construction of refugeedom, as well as the changes and impact of the environment in this context.

The impact of World War I on the environment and on civilians in Romania was far-reaching, the Central Powers’ occupation of Wallachia in 1916 led to the refuge of thousands of Romanians to its Moldova region. The experience and reality of refugeedom was strongly shaped by factors such as class, ethnicity, origin, opportunity and access.

Displacement and exodus in the context of the militarized environment of WWI was a highly gendered experience, not only on account of representation, but also with regard to gender-specific ascribed and assumed roles and responsibilities. Through an interdisciplinary approach, this project seeks to shed light on the heterogenous experiences and agency of female refugees in WWI Romania.

The goal of the dissertation to reconstruct and portray aspects of everyday lives and marginalized perspectives through a gender historical approach, providing the first investigation of this kind on this topic. The dissertation’s innovative character lies further in the analysis of so-far uninvestigated sources such as war photographs, which reveal the environmental impact of the war, as well as the processes and construction of refuge and exodus in this context.