Stefan Dorondel is a Lead Researcher at the Francisc I. Rainer Institute of Anthropology and the Institute for Southeast European Studies of the Romanian Academy. He holds a Ph.D. in History and Ethnology from Lucian Blaga University and a Ph.D. in Rural Studies from Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany.
He is the author of Moartea și apa. Ritualuri funerare, simbolism acvatic și structura lumii de dincolo în imaginarul țărănesc (Death and Water: Funerary Rituals, Aquatic Symbolism, and the Structure of the Otherworld in Peasant Imagination) (Paideia, 2004), and Disrupted Landscapes: State, Peasants and the Politics of Land in Postsocialist Romania (Berghahn, 2016). He is also co-author of When Things Become Property: Land Reform, Authority and Value in Postsocialist Europe and Asia (Berghahn, 2017), and co-editor of A New Ecological Order: Development and the Transformation of Nature in Eastern Europe (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2022), and Flowing Progress: Transforming the Danube Through Infrastructure (Purdue University Press, 2025, forthcoming).
Stefan is passionate about wetlands and riverscapes, and about the communities who inhabit and shape these environments. His research focuses on infrastructure, ecological transformations, restoration, and rewilding, all approached from a more-than-human perspective. A committed and outspoken ecologist, Stefan is equally driven by his scientific work and his personal connection to freshwater landscapes. Beyond his academic pursuits, he is also an avid diver.