Staff profile

I am a cultural historian of east-central Europe. My work covers the German minorities of east-central Europe, memory cultures, and travel writing in the Carpathians. I am particularly invested in reading modern east-central European history with a transnational perspective. 

German minorities

In my book Migrating Memories: Romanian Germans in Modern Europe (Cambridge University Press, 2021), I chart the story of German speakers in Romania in modern Europe. It is a book about a migration, minorities, and memories in a turbulent and transnational century in modern Europe. Romanian Germans were at the centre of major European events after 1918 and were constantly forced to rethink their identities. From uneasy supporters of Romania, to enthusiastic Nazis, to tepid Communists, to conciliatory Europeans, the story of Romanian Germans in modern Europe intervenes in debates in European history, migration, memory and minority studies.

I am also currently working with the IKGS (Munich) and the Arbeitskreis für Siebenbürgische Landeskunde on a project on the radicalisation of Romanian Germans in the 1930s, as well as a project with Cristian Cercel (Bochum) on transnational Germans.

Memory cultures

My work and teaching covers memory cultures throughout east-central Europe and asks questions about memory construction and transmission. I am also keen to push against the boundaries of east-west divisions in memory studies scholarship. German minorities in east-central Europe and sites of memory in the 'Habsburg world' play a key part in understanding memory boundaries.

Transnational history

I am completing a book with Bernhard Struck (St Andrews) and Jan Koura (Prague), Modern Europe: A Transnational History (Bloomsbury), in which we introduce a series of vignettes that plot a transnational European history that radically decentres modern European history. Foregrounding east-central Europe as well as global connections, Modern Europe charts a European history in three discreet episodes: 1760s-1850s, 1860s-1960s, and beyond the 1960s. More broadly, I am interested in east-central Europe's liminal position in global history. 

Carpathian travellers 

My new project explores New Europeans in the Carpathians, 1860-1920. From the 1860s, travellers, ethnographers, medics, and other bourgeois Europeans set out to discover the Carpathians. Over the next half century until the First World War they left behind a tapestry of writing, documentation, reports, visual material, correspondence and other traces. My project examines this confluence of a European interest in the Carpathian uplands that takes us away from the straightjacket of postcolonial readings of travel writing. 

Other projects

I jointly edited a special issue of National Identities with Tricia Cusack on 'The Making of Landscape in Modernity'. I am currently working with Emily Hanscam (Durham) on a project investigating the uses of ancient pasts in east-central Europe. Our edited volume, Digging Politics: The Ancient Past and Political Present (De Gruyter, 2022), will be a product of a workshop took place in Durham in June 2019. 

Twitter: @jtkoranyi

Doctoral Supervision

I welcome research students who want to work on minorities, memory, travel, or other aspects of transnational history. My geographic range is broadly-speaking the 'Habsburg world', Romania, as well as German-speaking world, but research supervision is not limited to that. 

Current and former PhD students:

Alberto Murru

Lenka Sediva

Christoph Doppelhofer

Razvan Dumitru

Max Loth-Hill

Christian Drury

Daniel Adamson

Zoe Shipley

 

• East-central Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
• Memory cultures
• Minorities in east-central Europe
• Transnational history

• 2022: Interview on the New Books Network: An interview by host Dr Roland Clark on the New Books Network about my book Migrating Memories.
• 2022: Futures of German Diasporas: Co-investigator on the DAAD programme 'Promoting German Studies in the United Kingdom and Ireland' with the project 'Futures of German Diasporas' (Birmingham, Durham, Lancaster).
• 2020: Department of History (Durham) podcast: 'Iron Curtain Twitchers: A Romanian German Family during the Cold War' - James Koranyi
• 2020: Interview on EU Radio: The Complicated Legacy of May 8 in Germany
• 2000:

  I was a board member of the Society for Romanian Studies from 2012-2014 and President Elect from 2014-2016. I write public articles for various forums including, e.g., The Conversation. 

  : I was a board member of the Society for Romanian Studies from 2012-2014 and President Elect from 2014-2016. I write public articles for various forums including, e.g., The Conversation. 

Authored book

• Koranyi, J., Koura, J., & Struck, B. (in press). Modern Europe: A Transnational History. Bloomsbury
• Koranyi, J. (2021). Migrating Memories: Romanian Germans in Modern Europe. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009047449

Chapter in book

• Koranyi, J. Travel Guides. In R. Bavaj, K. Lawson, & B. Struck (Eds.), Doing Spatial History (56-72). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429291739
• Koranyi, J. Nazi Divisions: A Romanian-German ‘Historians’ Dispute’ at the End of the Cold War. In J. Fellerer, R. Pyrah, & M. Turda (Eds.), Preview this Book Identities In-Between in East-Central Europe. Routledge
• Koranyi, J. ‘Priviri secrete peste Cortina de Fier: O familie de germani din România în perioada Războiului Rece’ (‘Iron Curtain Twitchers: A Romanian German Family during the Cold War’). In M. Beer, S. Radu, & F. Kührer-Wielach (Eds.), Germanii din România. Migrație și patrimoniu cultural după 1945 (Germans in Romania: Migration and Cultural Heritage since 1945 (73-94). Editura Academiei Româna
• Koranyi, J., & Struck, B. (2017). Space: Empires, Nations and Borders. In I. Livezeanu, & A. von Klimo (Eds.), The Routledge History of East Central Europe from 1700 (27-80). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315230894-2
• Koranyi, J. (2015). The Thirteen Martyrs of Arad: A Monumental Hungarian History. In F. L. Müller, & D. Geppert (Eds.), Sites of imperial memory : commemorating colonial rule in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (53-69). Manchester University Press
• Koranyi, J., & Wittlinger, R. (2011). ‘From Diaspora to Diaspora: The Case of Transylvanian Saxons in Romania and Germany’. In C. Sutherland, & E. Barabantseva (Eds.), Diaspora and Citizenship. Routledge

Edited book

• Koranyi, J., & Hanscam, E. (Eds.). (2023). Digging Politics: The Ancient Past and Contested Present in East-Central Europe. De Gruyter Oldenburg. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110697445-001

Journal Article

• Koranyi, J. (2023). Opposing Memories: Contest and Conspiracy over 1970s Romania. East Central Europe, 50(1), 37-59. https://doi.org/10.30965/18763308-50010003
• Koranyi, J. (2021). Gendered Escapes: British Travellers in the Carpathians, 1890s-1920s
• Koranyi, J. (2014). Voyages of Socialist Discovery: German-German Exchanges between the GDR and Romania. Slavonic and East European Review, 92(3), 479-506. https://doi.org/10.5699/slaveasteurorev2.92.3.0479
• Koranyi, J., & Cusack, T. (2014). Introduction. The making of landscape in modernity. National Identities, 16(3), 191-195. https://doi.org/10.1080/14608944.2014.934561
• Koranyi, J., & Wittlinger, R. (2011). From Diaspora to Diaspora: The Case of Transylvanian Saxons in Romania and Germany. Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, 17(1), 96-115. https://doi.org/10.1080/13537113.2011.550248
• Koranyi, J. (2011). ‘Reinventing the Banat: Cosmopolitanism as a German Cultural Export’. German Politics and Society, 29(3), 97-114. https://doi.org/10.3167/gps.2011.290306
• Koranyi, J. (2010). ‘The Narrative of Lost Utopias: The Saxon and Anglo-Saxon Edens’
• Koranyi, J. (2009). ‘Byzantium 330-1453: A Commentary on Europe’