The Academic Garage of the CEU Democracy Institute’s De- and Re-Democratization Workgroup cordially invites you to its first documentary screening, Academic_Puszi, a documentary on precarity, hypermobility, and mental health in academia, followed by a discussion with the director.
Academic_Puszi (2023, 102 min) is a documentary written and directed by Georgiana Turculet, known by her nickname, Georgie. As an awarded Marie S. Curie academic, Georgie undertakes a trip across Europe, from the East to the North, just after the Coronavirus Pandemic eased out with the opening of national borders – that is, just after two long years in which the entire world population got confined to their homes, neighborhoods, cities, regions or states – intermittently and disruptively of all human activities. This documentary is a personal journey of healing, portraying Georgie uniting with others, friends, colleagues, and unknown welcoming circles of people, while revisiting the places from her recent past. The central idea Georgie wishes to reflect upon, as a philosopher on her journey, is that of being stuck in movement, unveiling, in so doing, the precarity behind the otherwise prestigious outlook of her and most academic profiles and careers. The documentary reconstructs, through a poetic and reflexive style and rhythm, Georgie’s story that intertwines with interviewees’ personal and professional stories - all mounting jointly a criticism of the societal and academic culture and structure, within which we all live.
About the director:
Georgiana Turculet is a Research Affiliate at the CEU Democracy Institute, and Principal Investigator for an EU-funded Marie S. Curie research project titled On Just Movement, JUSMOVE, hosted by the Law Department at the Pompeu Fabra University (UPF) in Barcelona and the Big Data Science Laboratory at Universitatea de Vest din Timișoara (WUT). Her project aims at impacting scholarly and public contemporary debates, as well as stakeholders, such as United Nations agencies and the European Union. She holds a PhD from the Doctoral School of Political Science, Public Policy and International Relations of Central European University (CEU). Her Alma Mater University, CEU was forced to move together with its students and faculty from Hungary to Austria, which explains her interest in academic freedom and mobility.
Moderator:
Alexander Bor is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the CEU Democracy Institute's De- and Re-Democratization Workgroup, and a Visiting Professor at CEU Vienna. He received an MA in Political Science at the CEU in 2012, and a PhD in Political Science at Aarhus University in 2018, where he also worked as a postdoc until 2022. His research focuses on how the human mind navigates social and political challenges like political polarization, online political hostility, the COVID-19 pandemic, or selecting and evaluating political leaders. His work integrates insights from political behavior, social and evolutionary psychology, and public health. He employs diverse quantitative analytical tools like surveys, experiments and machine learning. His work has been published in leading journals (including PNAS, APSR, and Psych Science) and covered by international media outlets (e.g. New York Times, Washington Post, The Atlantic). At CEU, Alexander teaches courses on quantitative research methods.