• Vita

    Constanţa Vintilă received her first PhD in History and Civilization from Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris (2004) with a thesis on the history of the family in Wallachia in the eighteenth century; and a second PhD in Sociology from University of Bucharest (2012) with a thesis on the social modernity in the nineteenth century Romania. She completed her habilitation at the Doctoral School of the Romanian Academy, in 2020. From 2015 to 2020 she was the Principal Investigator on the project entitled Luxury, Fashion and Social Status in Modern Southeastern Europe, which was funded by the European Research Council’s Consolidator Grant, and hosted by New Europe College. Institute for Advanced Study, Bucharest. She was a Research Fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (2015-2016), and  at the Fondation de la Maison de Sciences de l’Homme, Paris (2007). Her work focuses on the family and women history in Modern Southeastern Europe, mobility and social identification, material cultural and social status, legal history in eighteenth century Europe.

  • Forschungsprojekt

    Foreign Subjects and Protégés in Court: Administering Justice in Modern Southeastern Europe, 1774-1830

    This project investigates the multiple legal and judicial strategies developed by foreign subjects and protégés in Wallachia and Moldavia between 1774 and 1830. These social actors, situated at the intersection of competing jurisdictions, constructed practices shaped by their complex social, political, and legal status. The study will focus in particular on the competition between different normative orders—social, political, and religious—invoked by litigants to assert their “rights,” as well as on the ways in which judges interpreted and applied legislation in their rulings.

    A central dimension of the research concerns the sudit, a category whose dynamic status reveals the limits of legal standardization in a multi-jurisdictional environment. The overlapping competences of consular, princely, and imperial authorities not only generated ambiguity, but also opened opportunities for negotiation, resistance, and legal creativity. Diplomatic tensions, reflected in reports, petitions, and regulations circulating among the region’s imperial capitals, testify to shifting belongings, confessional affiliations, and social identities that resisted easy codification. By analyzing these entangled practices, the project will shed light on the intersections of law, empire, and identity in Southeastern Europe, while also contributing to broader debates on legal pluralism, sovereignty, and the governance of diversity.

  • Einschlägige Veröffentlichungen

    Constanţa Vintilă, Changing Subjects, Moving Objects. Status, Mobility, and Social Transformation in Southeastern Europe, 1700-1850, Brill, Leiden, 2022.  Changing Subjects, Moving Objects – Status, Mobility, and Social Transformation in Southeastern Europe, 1700–1850 | Brill

    Constanţa Vintilă, Women, Consumption, and the Circulation of Ideas in South-Eastern Europe, 17th - 19th Centuries, Brill, Leiden, 2018 (ed. by). Women, Consumption, and the Circulation of Ideas in South-Eastern Europe, 17th - 19th Centuries | Brill

    Constanţa Vintilă, Im Schalwar und mit Baschlik. Kirche, Sexualität, Ehe und Scheidung in der Walachei im 18. Jarhundert, Frank&Timmme, Berlin, 2013.

    Constanţa Vintilă, Shaping a Phanariot town: ‘Good Order’ in Eighteenth century Bucharest, in Mária Pakucs, Júlia Derzi (eds.), Urbanity at the Periphery of Empires. Urban Goverbance and Administration in Transylvania, Wallachia and Moldavia, CEU Press, Budapest, 2025. pp. 247-269.

    Constanţa Vintilă, „Eating Daintily”. Food and Social Practices in the Danubian Principalities (1780-1850), Food & History, 21.2 (2023), 99-126.

    Constanţa Vintilă, ‘Legal Process and the Meanings of Justice (dreptate) in Eighteenth Century Romania’, Crime, Histoire & Sociétés/ Crime, History & Societies, 23, 2 (2019), 5–27.