Confronting Eugenics, Then and Now
In this lecture, Professor Marius Turda argues that to educate about the history of eugenics is essential while we work towards a fairer and more just society.
In this lecture, Professor Marius Turda argues that to educate about the history of eugenics, to engage with it, and to condemn it publicly, are all essential components of our efforts to understand a hidden and tenebrous past, while we work towards a fairer and more just society. We can only remove the global roots of eugenics through both personal and collective reckoning with the wrongs of its history.
Professor Marius Turda has been teaching at Oxford Brookes since 2005. He is the founder director of the Cantemir Institute at the University of Oxford (2012-2013) and founder of the Working Group on the History of Eugenics and Race (HRE), established in 2006. In 2022 he was awarded the Order of the Centenary by Her Majesty Margaret, Custodian of the Royal House of Romania.
His family traces its origins to the free nobility of the country of Maramures. The Turda family was first attested in a Royal Hungarian decree in 1608. He also shares the name with a city in Transylvania (Romanian Turda, Hungarian Torda) where the first act of religious tolerance in Europe was signed in 1568.