Exploring Asia in the Bibliography of Dissertations in the Field of Cultural Studies at a Master’s Programme in Romania

Cultural Studies, an interdisciplinary field, has various bibliographic sources belonging to authors from different cultural backgrounds, creating a favourable environment for aligning Romanian higher education to an intercultural approach. Being marked by European or American theories, the presence of Asian bibliography in Cultural Studies from Romania, although not excluded, might be questioned. The article presents an interdisciplinary exploratory study in Cultural Studies and Education focused on analysing the bibliography of dissertations from a master's programme in Cultural Studies at a Romanian university. A sample of 31 dissertations between the years 2022-2024 was analysed. The research aim was to provide preliminary data about Asia’s presence in the bibliographies by exploring data on authors with names of perceived Asian origin, regardless of their nationality or citizenship. Using a mixed methodology and applying assumptions assisted by technology, the study gathered preliminary data about the names’ numerical and territorial distribution. The final results reflected a numerical underuse of perceived Asian names with a decreasing curve in most of the data from 2022 to 2024. Despite an overall higher territorial diversity in names’ places of origin, the average number per dissertation was low. Due to the challenges encountered, the results could only be approximated.