Silvia Marton is associate professor of political science at the Faculty of Political Science, University of Bucharest. She received her PhD in political science from the University of Bologna (2007) and University of Bucharest (2006). She was researcher, visiting professor, or guest lecturer at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Paris) (2012, 2013), Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme (Paris) (2009, 2010), University of Avignon (2015, 2016, 2018), University Paris-Sorbonne (LabEx EHNE) (2017), and Autonomous University of Barcelona (2019). She was a research fellow of the New Europe College – Institute for Advanced Studies, Bucharest (2003- 04, 2020-21), and Andrew W. Mellon fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (2005); postdoctoral fellow of Agence universitaire de la francophonie (AUF) at Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales (Paris) (2007). Since 2009, she co-organizes the monthly focus-group “Political and Social History of the 18th and 19th century” within the New Europe College – Institute for Advanced Study, Bucharest. She was member of the CNRS-funded network “Politics and corruption: history and sociology” (GDRI CNRS 840) (2017-2020).
Silvia Marton began her career studying the relationship between modernization and state- and nation-building processes in nineteenth-century Romania and Eastern Europe. A number of her analyses focused on the place of anti-Semitism and parliamentarism in these dynamics. Since then, her scholarship has also made contributions to the constructivist (comparative) history and sociology of political “corruption”.
In this project, Silvia Marton will focus on the meaning of “corruption” by historicizing the concept and the practices historical actors defined as such in the process of infrastructure construction (notably railroads) in the nineteenth century. She examines the corruption scandals surrounding construction of infrastructure that generated and constantly reshaped colonial anxieties in the process of nation-state-building, when faced with Great Powers and their imperial and coloniallike aspirations of political and economic influence.
Selected publications:
“Republica de la Ploiești” și începuturile parlamentarismului în România, Bucharest, Humanitas, 2016
Moralité du pouvoir et corruption en France et en Roumanie, XVIIIe-XXe siècle (co-edited with Frédéric Monier and Olivier Dard), Presses universitaires de Paris-Sorbonne, 2017
“Dénonciations socialistes et nationalistes de l’»oligarchie» en Roumanie”, in Cesare Mattina, Frédéric Monier, Olivier Dard, Jens Ivo Engels (eds.), Dénoncer la corruption. Chevaliers blancs, pamphlétaires et promoteurs de la transparence à l’époque contemporaine, Demopolis, Paris, 2018, p. 95-115
“La ‘corrupción’ electoral en Rumania. Los comienzos titubeantes de la democracia”, Ayer. Revista de Historia Contemporánea, vol. 115, no. 3, 2019, p. 77-104
“Transparency” and “corruption” in Romanian electoral politics (1866–1914)”, in Jens Ivo Engels, Frédéric Monier (eds.), History of Transparency in Politics and Society, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht unipress, Goettingen, 2020, p. 35-51
„Denunţarea „funcţionarismului” şi a clientelismului în Vechiul Regat” (with Andrei-Dan Sorescu), in Judit Pál, Vlad Popovici, Andrei Florin Sora (coord.), Servitorii Statului: Funcționari, funcții și funcționarism în România modernă (1830-1948), Cluj-Napoca, Editura Mega, 2022, p. 75-105