Over the past year, a team from the Institute for the Study of Recent Past and the Historical Museum of Dimitrovgrad has dedicated itself to the challenging task of offering a contemporary and well-documented overview of the history of Dimitrovgrad and its people.
It all began with the idea for a new permanent exhibition proposed by the museum’s director, Antoaneta Stancheva. The specific role of the Institute was to lay the scientific foundation upon which an accessible, engaging, and educational narrative about 20th-century Bulgaria could be built. The history of Dimitrovgrad, often referred to in the past as the “socialist Jerusalem,” can serve as a microcosm of the entire country and Bulgarian society.
Dimitrovgrad and the Pursuit of a Good Life: A Conversation with People, Ideas, and Nature
The focus of our “theses” is, above all, on the people. Through their eyes — their experiences, hopes, disappointments, successes, and failures — we attempt to recreate the picture of the recent past.
The result of the team’s work, which includes Assoc. Prof. Galina Goncharova, Prof. Daniel Vachkov, Prof. Daniela Koleva, Assoc. Prof. Dimitar Gyudurov, Dimitar Sht. Dimov, Assoc. Prof. Zhivko Lefterov, Lyubomira Atanasova, Prof. Martin Ivanov, Assoc. Prof. Maya Angelova, Assoc. Prof. Mihail Gruev, Prof. Momchil Metodiev, Nedyalka Todorova, Nikolina Umurska, Dr. Petya Valkova, and Prof. Plamen Doynov, can be downloaded here (In Bulgarian):
The catalog of places, ideas, and people we are presenting is open to teams of designers, curators, researchers, technology specialists, communication/marketing experts, copywriters, and others to propose their concept for the creation of the permanent exhibition at the Museum in Dimitrovgrad.