Marius Turda

Professor Marius Turda is a leading historian of eugenics, race, and biomedicine in 20th-century Central and Eastern Europe. He is affiliated with Oxford Brookes University, where he holds the position of Professor in the School of Education, Humanities and Languages. He is a core member of the Centre for Medical Humanities (CMH) and leads the History of Race and Eugenics (HRE) research group. Turda is actively involved in public scholarship, supervising PhD students and leading major research projects funded by the Ford Foundation and the Swedish Research Council.

His research focuses on the entangled histories of eugenics, racism, nationalism, and the Holocaust, with particular emphasis on Romania and Hungary. He has curated exhibitions on eugenics and biopolitics, and founded the Confront Eugenics initiative to promote global anti-eugenic dialogue. His scholarly contributions span history of medicine, anthropology, and intellectual history.

His recent publications reflect a sustained engagement with eugenics’ legacies, the racialization of Eastern Europeans, Roma genocide, and biomedical racism. These works demonstrate a thematic evolution from national eugenic movements to transnational and ethical dimensions of biopolitics, increasingly emphasizing public engagement and social justice.

• Fellow, Royal Historical Society
• Member, Academia Europaea
• Senior Fellow, Higher Education Academy
• Member, American Psychological Association
• Board Member, ARCHER Coalition
• Member, International Commission for the History and Theory of Historiography

He has supervised numerous PhD students and secured significant research funding. He is the founder of the Confront Eugenics project and has curated exhibitions in Romania. He won the 2025 essay prize from Observator Cultural for his book In Search of the Perfect Romanian.

Turda leads the Centre for Medical Humanities Seminar at Oxford Brookes and has organized major academic events, including the East & East-Central Europe Seminar at Oxford. His work bridges academic rigor with public impact, advocating for historical reckoning with eugenics to inform contemporary anti-racist and anti-eugenic movements.