Vlad-Alexandru Moț

Vlad-Alexandru Moț is a Fellow in the Department of History at Harvard University and a Ph.D. candidate in History at the University of Bucharest, Romania. His research focuses on modern European and transnational history, with particular interests in associational networks, institutional legitimacy and recognition, and informal diplomacy. His doctoral dissertation examines the international relations of Romanian Freemasonry between 1880 and 1937, tracing the institutions, practices, and networks through which Romanian Masonic bodies participated in a wider European and international system.

At Harvard, Moț examines Prince Hall Freemasonry and the history of recognition in the Atlantic world. The project, "Recognition as an Informal Regime in the Atlantic World: Prince Hall Freemasonry and the Documentary Politics of Legitimation," considers how charters, correspondence, printed texts, and other documentary practices were used to establish, contest, and defend institutional legitimacy across Masonic jurisdictions.

A further area of his work concerns computational and AI-assisted approaches to historical research, particularly the analysis of large documentary collections, source verification, provenance analysis, and reproducible research practices.