Adelina Stefan is a historian of 20th century eastern and southern Europe with a particular interest in the cultural history of the Cold War, tourism and consumption.
Previously, she was a Humanities Initiative Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study at Central European University in Budapest and a research associate in the Department of History and Civilization at the European University Institute in Florence. She holds a PhD in History from the University of Pittsburgh, USA. Her book manuscript tentatively titled, Vacationing in Dictatorships: Foreign Tourists to Socialist Romania and Francoist Spain, 1960s-1970s examines how international tourism brought about a bottom-up liberalization in the two dictatorships, as it altered ordinary people’s lifestyles and material culture. Her most recent publications are: “Postcards Transfer across the Iron Curtain: Foreign Tourists and Transcultural Exchanges in Socialist Romania during the 1960s and 1980s“ in the International Journal for History, Culture and Modernity (HCM), special issue on “Photo Transfer in Cold War Europe”, vol. 5, no.1, (2018), pp. 169-195 and “Foreign Tourists and the Shadow Economy in Socialist Romania in the 1960s-1980s” in Christian Noack, Sune Bechmann Pedersen (eds.), Tourism and Travel During the Cold War: Negotiating Tourist Experiences Across the Iron Curtain (Routledge, 2019).