Pecican is also interested in how Eastern European culture developed in contact with the Western culture during the 19th and 20th centuries. "Hașdeenii. O odisee a receptării" (2003) and "B. P. Hasdeu istoric" (2004), books developed from his PhD thesis, attempt to explain how, through the efforts of several leading intellectuals during the second part of the 19th century, modern nationalism, together with liberalism, formed a nationalist identity. "Poarta leilor. Istoriografia tânară din Transilvania" (Vol.I: 2005; Vol.II: 2006) is a synthesis concerning the young historiography from Transylvania after the Romanian Revolution of 1989, investigating its attraction to the Western model and its polemic with the nationalist-communist autochthonous model as developed by the Communist regime.