Cultures of sacrifice and its critics between past and present. Uncover the roots and question the rituals with a deep dive into cultures of sacrifice across time and religions

^{*recognition of ECTS depends on your home university}

Physical mobility

The physical mobility section of the BIP will take place between 2-6 June 2026, in Bucharest, Romania. The program of the on-site component is structured as follows:

Day 1

Morning

• First meeting of the entire student cohort with teachers and student assistants (students from the University of Bucharest involved in the BIP for administrative purposes).
• Lecture presentation: The Textual Memory of Construction Sacrificial Practices: A Case Study on the Argeș Monastery
• Objective: To present how the theme of construction sacrifice is reshaped through its circulation in the form of an oral tradition.

Afternoon

• Preparatory workshop: How to conduct ethnographic research.
• Introduction to ethnographic methods: interview, conversation, and observation.
• Purpose: To familiarize students with the basic methods used to study the memory of cultural practices, preparing them for their visit to the Curtea de Argeș Monastic Complex.
• Stakeholder involvement: The National Museum of the Romanian Peasant.

Day 2 – Day Trip to Curtea de Argeș

• Visit to the church site to explore how the memory of sacrifice is preserved through texts and its contemporary echoes among pilgrims, visitors, guides, and clerical staff.
• This visit will give students the opportunity to conduct real-life ethnographic research.
• Objective: To study cultures of sacrifice using ethnographic methods.

Day 3

Morning

• Keynote lecture by Alexandra Litu (Faculty of History):
• The Archaeological and Epigraphic Record of Animal Sacrifice in the Ancient Greek World
• Objective: To present research on sacrificial cultures studied through archaeological methods, focusing particularly on the former Greek colonies along the Black Sea coast.
• This lecture will provide the context for the next two workshops, which focus on archaeological findings from Romanian sites.

Afternoon

• Workshop at the Institute of Archaeology
• Objective: To analyze archaeological remains discovered in Romania and housed at the Institute, while presenting the methods used by archaeologists to establish connections between these remains and sacrificial practices.

Day 4

Morning

• Workshop at the Institute of Anthropology
• Objective: To analyze osteoarchaeological remains and demonstrate how physical anthropologists assess evidence of sacrificial practices using human and animal bones.

Afternoon

• Collaborative preparation of student presentations:
  - Students will be divided into smaller groups. The most senior student, or the one who has shown the best performance so far, will act as an informal team leader.
  - In parallel, students will curate visual materials gathered during workshops and fieldwork. They will select those with the greatest potential to become viral on social media.
  - Selected visuals will be uploaded to a dedicated social media account created to share updates about the BIP activities and students’ research findings.

Day 5

• Final student presentations
  - Students will present their work.
  - In addition to traditional teacher assessments, students will provide peer feedback on two levels:
  a) The content of the presentations
  b) The presentation strategies used

Virtual part

The course will run online between 8 February -  29 May 2026. 

• The virtual component will consist of a series of introductory lesson of cultures of sacrifice and will last 08.02.-29.05.2026.
• The sessions will take place on Fridays, at 4 p.m. CET (5 p.m. Bucharest time). The concrete dates will be announced at a later stage.

1. Introduction (Adrian Stoicescu, Marianna Ferrara, Pierluigi Lanfranchi)

2. Sacrifice and Politics (Pierluigi Lanfranchi)

3. Sacrifice and the Body (Adrian Stoicescu, Alexandra Litu)

4. Sacrifice and Violence (Nadia Cattoni and Philippe Bornet)

5. Sacrifice and Law (Francesca Scrofani)

6. Sacrifice and Food (Marianna Ferrara)

7. Conclusions and discussion

Assessment

We propose a three-step approach to the assessment of students’ performance during the project:

a) Written deliverables – a 1000-word paper on the collaborative learning physical mobility activity to detail the hands-on case study in which the competences gained should be reflected in small research projects conducted

on site.

b) Oral deliverables – final group presentations stemming from the collaborative research experience

c) Visual/Digital deliverables – posters/reels/larger videos/pictures to function as alternative ways to present the research findings, also from the perspective of popularisation of science.