Highlights
Student Profile: Narcis Tulbure
by Gina McDonell
After receiving his bachelor's degree in finance, Narcis Tulbure (A&S G '10) worked at the National Securities Commission in Romania, his home country, for a year before returning to school to pursue another interest—history. Now a doctoral candidate in Pitt's Department of Anthropology, he is combining the disciplines of finance, history, and anthropology to inform his research.
Narcis' dissertation, "Shifting Measures: The Transformation of Money Regimes in Contemporary Romania," explores the reorganization of money and values in Romania after the exit from socialism. The project documents the histories of several defaulted mutual funds that eliminated the life-savings of more than 300,000 investors. Narcis works with several groups of lay investors acting for the recuperation of lost money, the allocation of moral compensations, the condemnation of those responsible for the collapse of the funds, and the reform of regulations pertaining to the capital market.
To further his research, Narcis has taken advantage of a wide variety of resources at Pitt. He says, "I have used a lot of resources outside of the anthropology department—the UCIS Center for Russian and East European Studies; the Romanian Studies Group; classes and lectures in the history, economics, and political science departments; the good library; conferences and lectures at other universities—and I've connected with many faculty members in other departments."
Since February 2007, external funding has enabled Narcis to conduct field research in Romania. He is currently funded by a prestigious New Europe College fellowship. That award is the last in a long list of awards that he's received since beginning his doctoral studies. Other external funders of Narcis' work have been the Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education of Charles University and Economics Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic (CERGE-EI) Foundation, the National Science Foundation, and the Society for Anthropology of Europe.
Internal support offers have come from the European Union Center for Excellence, the University Center for International Studies (UCIS), the Department of Anthropology, and the School of Arts and Sciences. The variety of resources at the University of Pittsburgh and throughout the city has been of great benefit to Narcis. His work provides a good example of how the cross-disciplinary approach supported at Pitt can make positive contributions to academic research around the world.
