Ana Smaranda Teodorescu is a Ph.D. student at the Doctoral School of Theatre and Film at the Babeș-Bolyai University. Her Ph.D. thesis title is: Festive culture in national communism. Case Study: Organizing the National Day of August 23rd during Nicolae Ceaușescu’s regime. Performance and propaganda.

Ana is a Ph.D. student since 2017 and her Doctoral supervisor is prof. dr. Miruna Runcan (Daniel Gologan).

1. What was your favorite course in the bachelor’s and master’s studies and why?

First of all, I would like to mention that I completed my bachelor’s and master’s studies at National University of Theatre and Film “I.L. Caragiale” in Bucharest and only my doctoral studies at BBU. Then, if I have to choose only two favorite courses I will definitely choose Aesthetics and elements of ethics and Aesthetics and theory of theater in national culture and cultural anthropology. This choice has to do primarily with the special teacher who held them – Gheorghe Ceaușu – who managed to turn the courses into something extremely friendly and accessible. He also opened my imagination to an extremely rich universe, I learned what interdisciplinarity means and I caught the taste for complex subjects, located in border areas.

2. If you had the freedom to choose your field of research, would you choose to continue what you do or change your field? 

I would definitely continue the research on this field, especially since I consider that it has this quality of multiple perspectives from which it can be approached and it also represents a topic which is still not enough researched.

3. In your opinion, what is the best feature of BBU?

Maybe the fact that it is a doctoral school that shows openness for researching interdisciplinary topics and it also offers highly trained professors for such approaches.

4. What advice would you give to your younger self?

Referring exclusively to the position of a PhD student, probably to have more confidence in my analysis skills and to be more patient with the research process.

5. What is the first thing you will do after the pandemic ends?

For me it looks like this will happen so late that it does not even allow me to look so far into the future.