Marinov, Tchavdar

French School At Athens (Ecole française d’Athènes)

Research Topic: Negotiating Heritage, Reclaiming History: Transnational Politics of Heritage and the Ottoman-Era “Bulgarian Monuments” in Türkiye

Dr. Marinov is a historian dealing with modern and contemporary Balkan history. He is a former researcher at the French School at Athens and lecturer at the Universities of Sofia and Plovdiv. Marinov has worked most notably on the history of modern Macedonia, on the construction of cultural heritage, and the political uses of the past in the Balkans. He is the author of The Macedonian Question from 1944 to Nowadays. Communism and Nationalism in the Balkans (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2010) and Our Ancestors the Thracians: Ideological Uses of Antiquity in Southeast Europe (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2016) (both in French). His research project at ANAMED focuses on a series of buildings from the late Ottoman era that could be designated as “Bulgarian monuments” in Türkiye. Marinov is interested in the role these monuments play in transnational politics of heritage, involving a variety of national, local and inter-state actors: Turkish and Bulgarian state institutions, municipalities in Istanbul and elsewhere, community organizations and “civil society,” business entrepreneurs, Church institutions, and EU institutions. His project thus reexamines the history of individual buildings as well as the dynamics, the actors, and the diverse logics of definition and protection of heritage.