Partners

The Centre for Population Studies is an institute of Babeş-Bolyai University of Cluj-Napoca, one of the most prestigious Romanian universities. The main objective of the Centre is the scientific research of aspects related to the past, present and future of the Romanian population. Its mission, since its establishment in 2002, is to find and edit statistical sources in order to know the population evolution on the Romanian territory, to research the dynamics and structure of Romania’s population or that of certain provinces, to elaborate statistical and demographical syntheses and monographic studies, to support didactic programmes on population research.

The Centre strives to present abroad the Romanian achievements in the field of country’s population studies, through participating of Centre’s members in international scientific research programs and establishment of collaborations with similar institutions in the world (from 2005 it is a member of European Association for Population Studies), and organizing periodically scientific manifestations (conferences, workshops, book presentations and debates, etc.) dedicated to certain important or topical issues related to the study of our country’s and the world’s population in general. The Centre for Population Studies is editing an international journal also, Romanian Journal of Population Studies, with articles in English, but also in French or German.

The experience gathered in over a decade of activity in the field of historical demography, along with the lack of other similar institutions in the Romanian scientific environment, back up CPS-UBB’s position as the most suitable research centre for the implementation of such a project.

The Norwegian Historical Data Centre, functioning upon the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Tromsø, is one of the most prestigious institutes in Historical Demography field in Europe. Established in 1981, it aims to ease access to historical sources (censuses and parish registers) through their computerized processing. Norway has one of the world’s best coverage of nominative protocol data in censuses and church registers from the last two to three centuries. The main product of NHDC`s activity is intended to be a national registry of the population of the 18th and 19th centuries, primarily for research purposes, but also for the benefit of schools, genealogists, local historians, etc. Access to the sources is eased by the use of NHDC's typeset material. The purpose of this database is reconstructing individual life experiences on a large scale through the identification of the same people in multiple sources through time; this method facilitates a new vision of historical change, emerged from the systematic analysis of many thousands of individual and family trajectories. NHDC-UT is currently directing a somehow similar project, aiming at completing (actually filling the blanks in) the Norwegian historical population database coverage for the period 1735-1964.

Due to this activity, the Norwegian Historical Data Centre has extended expertise in demographic database construction, which makes it one of the most suitable institutional partners for the Centre for Population Studies.