Alina Mungiu-Pippidi

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Alina Mungiu-Pippidi (b. March 12, 1964) is a Romanian political scientist, academic, journalist and writer. A commentator on national politics, she is one of the most prominent civil society activists in post-1989 Romania, and, since 1990, an active contributor to 22. Mungiu-Pippidi is a professor at the Şcoala Naţională de Ştiinţe Politice şi Administrative in Bucharest, where she holds courses on Nationalism and Electoral Behavior; she has also lectured on post-Cold War transition to a market economy at the Harvard, Stanford, Princeton and Oxford Universities.

1 Biography
2 Selective works
- 2.1 Essays
- 2.2 Plays
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Biography

Born in Iaşi, she was graduated as a valedictorian from the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Iaşi. Starting in her student years, she began contributing essays of literary criticism to the magazines Opinia Studenţească (of which she became editor in chief after the Romanian Revolution, in 1991-1992) and Cronica. After 1993, she worked for the Bucharest daily Express (until 1994). She was also the Romanian corespondent for the French newspaper Le Monde (1992-1993), and was employed as a news editor by the Romanian Television Company (1997-1998). In 2000, she authored a political science textbook for optional studies in high schools.

Mungiu-Pippidi holds a doctorate in social psychology, and also studied at Harvard University.

In 1995, she founded Romania's largest think tank, the Romanian Academic Society (SAR), which issued several reports that were at the center of public debates (among others, they were credited with promoting steps that led Parliament to ultimately adopt legislation regarding freedom of information, flat taxing, and other approaches to Romania's accession to the European Union. Mungiu-Pippidi is currently the SAR's president. She has also created and led the "Coalition for a Clean Parliament" (Coaliţia pentru un Parlament Curat), which in the wake of the 2004 legislative elections, campaigned for candidates with reported moral problems (such as incompatibility or undergoing the investigation of judicial authorities) to be excluded from party lists (98 candidatures were withdrawn following the Coalition's campaign).

[edit] Selective works

[edit] Essays

Românii după '89 ("The Romanians after '89")
Doctrine politice. Concepte universale şi realităţi româneşti ("Political doctrines. Universal concepts and Romanian realities"), 1998
Introducere în politologie. Manual opţional pentru liceu. ("An introduction to politology. Optional textbook for high school"), 2000
Romania after 2000. Threats and Challenges, 2002

[edit] Plays

Alina Mungiu-Pippidi has also written a number of plays, the most high-profile of which has been The Evangelists. The play, which was written in the 1990s, only debuted in Romania in 2005, where it sparked a considerable amount of controversy from Christian religious groups, who labeled it as "blasphemy" and "an attack against public morals".^[1] The play is based on the life of Jesus from a different point of view than that of the New Testament.