Cristina A. BejaN, PhD
Finalist for the 2021 MSU Denver Faculty Senate Teaching Award
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"Your passion for your discipline and your desire to share that passion with your students [is] obvious ... You are truly an inspiring professor."
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- Metropolitan State University of Denver to Prof. Bejan
A seasoned history and theatre professor and historian of totalitarianism and the Holocaust, visit Dr. Cristina A. Bejan's profile on Women Also Know History. Bejan has held teaching appointments at Georgetown University (as the Ion RaÈ›iu Teaching Fellow in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service), Duke University, UNC-Greensboro, Wake Technical Community College, Metropolitan State University of Denver and University of Denver. She is currently studying at University of Paris 1 Panthéon - Sorbonne. She has held fellowships at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Georgetown University, and twice at the Woodrow Wilson Center. Bejan has presented her research at numerous international conferences. Her writing and research interests include totalitarianism and genocide in Europe, South Asia and Africa. Bejan also worked as a researcher at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum for three years. For 9 years she served as an invited guest lecturer for the U.S. Foreign Service Institute (part of the State Department; has been renamed the National Foreign Affairs Training Center) providing tailored lectures to US diplomats departing for Romania, Moldova, Ukraine, and Bulgaria. In November 2023 and 2025 she was the keynote speaker at the international conference "Crossing Boundaries in Culture and Communication" and taught courses as guest lecturer at the Romanian-American University in Bucharest. She recently filmed in Hollywood as an expert historian on A&E's The History Channel "History's Greatest Mysteries" TV series hosted by Laurence Fishburne.



Bejan contributed 64 articles to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos 1933 -1945, Vol. 3. In 2019 she published her first book Intellectuals and Fascism in Romania: The Criterion Association (Palgrave Macmillan) and she has started work on two research projects entitled: "Victims of Colonialism - Africa and the Holocaust" and "The Romanian National Theatre Under Totalitarianism". Bejan's 16 research languages are English, French, German, Romanian, Hungarian, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Ukrainian, Ruthenian, Yiddish, Hebrew, Dutch, Flemish, and South Pacific pidgin and she is always discovering new ones. Now living in Paris and professionally affiliated with the Sorbonne, she has embarked on writing her next book as historian: The Unknown Holocaust: Axis crimes & memory in Africa, France, and Romania. A proud graduate of Wadham College, University of Oxford's college known for Human Rights advocacy, Dr. Bejan is passionate about Equal Rights and Access to Education. Her Oxford degrees were fully funded by Rhodes and Fulbright Scholarships and many grants.
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Courses Taught​
The Holocaust: Romania, France and Colonial Contexts (Africa)
History of Modern Europe
History of the Islamic World
USA History since 1865
20th Century European History
History of Germany WWI - WWII
World History before 1500 (Ancient)
World History after 1500 (Modern)
The Enlightenment
The Failure of Liberalism and the Rise of Dictatorship in 20th C Romania
Romanian Cultural Greats of the 20th Century
​Honors Program - Honors Thesis Supervisor (Holocaust Education)
Theatre History & Criticism I
Staging Cultures: Theatre, Drama, and Multiculturalism

June 10, 2009, bejan lost her colleague and friend STEPHEN Tyrone JohnS to a VIOLent Hate Crime committed at her workplace in Washington DC. Every professional decision she has made since has been to honor his memory and fight Hate in all its Evil dimensions. Love you & miss you, sTEPHEN.
Dr. Cristina A. Bejan, Author/Artist in PARIS
Honored to make her #Paris debut as published poet (read the current Paris Lit Up [PLU] Gazette) and born in Colorado at the height of the Cold War, Madame CRISTINA ADRIANA RIORDAN BEJAN, DPhil (Oxon) [aka Lady Godiva] is an award-winning, multilingual Romanian-American historian, theatre artist and spoken word poet living and creating in Paris, France (E.U.). An Oxford DPhil, Rhodes Scholar (the only one to hold Romanian citizenship since the scholarship's founding in 1902), Fulbright Scholar and Aspen Ideas Fellow, she has been featured on A&E's The History Channel, C-SPAN and multiple Romanian TV channels as well as international print and audio media: including the Washington Post, Times Literary Supplement, Foreign Policy and ELLE Romania magazine. (All press links in English and Romanian available on LINKTREE.) Her hit play DISTRICTLAND was purchased for TV development. In NYC Bejan has performed at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club and launched five published plays at The Drama Book Shop. She is the intellectual disciple of Radu Ioanid (Co-Vice-Chair of the Iliescu Commission on the Holocaust in Romania alongside Elie Wiesel and current Ambassador of Romania to Israel) and Vladimir Tismaneanu (Chair of the Băsescu Presidential Commission for the Study of Communism in Romania and Professor at University of Maryland). Bejan is the niece of RICHARD RIORDAN, Order of Malta, Mayor of Los Angeles (1993 - 2001) and California Secretary of Education under Governor Schwarzenegger (2003 - 2005); daughter of ADRIAN BEJAN (top 0.01% most cited scientists worldwide; most famous living Romanian-born scientist) and cousin of author PANAÏT ISTRATI ("The Maxim Gorky of the Balkans"). In September 2025 Bejan was awarded the George Parkin Distinguished Service Award by the Rhodes Trust. She is a proud member of the Rhodes Society. Bejan recently had her Paris debut as author and artist at the Dissident Club. She is grateful to all (a full house!) who attended her recent book launch with Paul Kenyon at Blackwells in Oxford, UK. Since October 2025, Bejan is professionally affiliated with Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University, where she attends classes: preliminary studies for her 2nd Doctorate.

