PRESENTERS
Glenda Bailey-Mershon grew up in the Appalachian South in a family with Romani, Cherokee, Catawba, and Scottish roots. A former bookseller and publisher, her publications include sa-co-ni-ge: blue smoke: poems from the Southern Appalachians; Bird Talk: Poems, A History of the American Women’s Movement: a Study Guide, and four volumes as editor of Jane’s Stories’ anthologies by women writers, including Bridges and Borders.
Lídia Balogh is a junior research fellow at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences Centre for Social Sciences Institute for Legal Studies and PhD candidate at Eötvös Loránd University’s , Film-, Media and Cultural Theory Program in Budapest. She holds MA degrees in Nationalism Studies (Central European University, Budapest), Communication Studies and Hungarian Language (József Attila University, Szeged, Hungary). In the past years she worked also as a freelance researcher, manager of human rights NGOs, and has been active in the fields of Roma rights and women's rights.
Margaret H. Beissinger teaches in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Princeton University. Her research and writing focuses on Balkan cultures and oral traditions, oral epic, and Romani traditional culture and music-making, with a focus on southern Romania, where she has undertaken extensive fieldwork both before and after the 1989 revolution, especially among Romani musicians. She is the author of The Art of the Lăutar: The Epic Tradition of Romania (1991) and coeditor of Epic Traditions in the Contemporary World: The Poetics of Community (1999) and the forthcoming Manele in Romania: Cultural Expression and Social Meaning in Balkan Popular Music as well as numerous articles.
Colleen Bertsch is a Ph.D. candidate in Musicology/Ethnomusicology at the University of Minnesota. Her dissertation is tentatively called "Transylvanian Folk Violinists and their Coarticulation of Embodied Musical Techniques and Identity Performance." She has been studying and playing Transylvanian string band music since 2006, and will begin dissertation fieldwork in Romania this October with the support from a U.S. Fulbright Student fellowship.
Joshua Brown earned his PhD in ethnomusicology at UC Riverside in 2014 and is currently an adjunct professor at Chapman University in Orange, California. Funded by grants from the Fulbright Institute of International Education and the University of California President’s Office, Josh’s research addresses the ways that flamenco is tied to specific ideas about race, place, class and social life that are pervasive throughout Andalusia. In his dissertation, Josh explores the often fluid boundaries between public and private performance, including how they are altered by sound reproduction technologies and come to define authenticity, community, family and tradition among flamenco aficionados and performers.
Ioanida Costache is a violinist and videographer currently pursuing a PhD in Ethnomusicology at Stanford University. In 2013-2014 she researched Romanian-Roma music – muzică lăutărească – in Romania while on a Fulbright Research Grant. In Romania, Ioanida worked with Speranţa Rădulescu, the most prolific ethnographer of Romanian traditional music, and conducted her own fieldwork as well. She took lessons with a Roma violinist about whom she made a short documentary film, which also touches upon her own Roma identity and family history regarding Romanian-Roma music.
Sabrina Deaton is an American Roma currently working toward her doctorate of Sociology at the University of Central Florida (UCF) in Orlando, Florida. Sabrina’s research interests are focused in the area of social inequalities of race and ethnicity specializing in the inequalities faced by the Roma. Primarily concentrating her research on the Roma populations in the United States, many of Sabrina’s past and current studies analyze negative media portrayals of the Roma and the effects and implications such negative media images have on the Roma in the larger social context. Other projects have included examining recent immigration issues and policies that have restricted Roma migration to Canada and throughout Europe. Sabrina presently serves as the Instructor of Record for Race and Ethnicity Studies, which is offered by the Sociology Department at UCF. Additionally, Sabrina has guest lectured for various departments at the University of Central Florida conveying insights gleaned from her own research and renowned Romani Studies scholars. Notably, Sabrina was recently invited as a lecturer for a special campus-wide diversity lecture series hosted by the Office of Diversity Initiatives. Currently, she is in the process of designing a Romani Studies course to be taught at a future date.
Beate Eder-Jordan is Assistant Professor at the Department of Comparative Literature at the University of Innsbruck, Austria. She has been involved in research on topics related to Roma literatures and cultures for over 25 years. In her book Geboren bin ich vor Jahrtausenden… Bilderwelten in der Literatur der Roma und Sinti (I was born millenniums ago… Worlds of images in the literature of Roma and Sinti; Klagenfurt/Celovec: Drava 1993) she explores similarities and differences in literary work by Roma in different countries. This was the first piece of research on the topic from a comparative point of view. In her articles she deals with issues including national-socialist race and extinction policy reflected in Roma and Sinti literatures, the socio-political situation, orality and internal criticism within literature and the arts. Eder-Jordan calls Romani literatures a stroke of luck for Comparative Literature (“La littérature romani: une aubaine pour la littérature comparée“, Revue Etudes Tsiganes 36/1, 2009, p. 146-179). She has organized readings and cultural events with Romani writers and artists, such as the 2015 «writer in residence» program (Jovan Nikolić) at the University of Innsbruck. http://www.uibk.ac.at/writer-in-residence/, http://www.uibk.ac.at/sprachen-literaturen/vergl/personen/ederjordan.html
Lorely French is Distinguished University Professor of German and Chair of the Department of World Languages and Literatures at Pacific University in Oregon. In 2009 she co-organized (with Michaela Grobbel at Sonoma State University) the first American exhibit of the artworks of Ceija Stojka, an Austrian Romani writer, artist, performer, educator, and spokesperson for Roma. Lorely French has written several articles on Ceija Stojka’s writings and artworks. Other publications include a book entitled German Women as Letter Writers 1750-1850 with Fairleigh Dickinson University Press/Associated University Press; articles on German, Austrian, and Swiss women writers from the nineteenth century to the present; a film on Berlin as an "intercultural text” (co-produced with Louise Stoehr and Gudrun Sherman), which includes a section on Roma in Berlin; and a volume of essays on Austrian and German literature and culture (co-edited, with Roswitha Burwick and Ivett Guntersdorfer). She was co-editor (with Pauline Beard) of three volumes of Pacific Coast Philology (PCP), the journal of the Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association, from 2008-10, and she edited a special volume of PCP on migration, immigration, and movement in literature and culture, published by Pennsylvania State University Press in 2014. Her book Roma Voices in the German-Speaking World, in which she analyzes autobiographies, folktales, and novels by Roma in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, is scheduled to appear in May, 2015 with Bloomsbury Publishing in New York and London.
Irina Grosser (nee Abelmann) is 57 years old and a German citizen. She lives in Berlin, Germany. She is a language mediator and works as a secretary. She plays guitar, sings, is interested in philosophy, and reads Deepack Chopra. She also enjoys yoga and swimming.
Habiba Hadziavdic is an Adjunct Faculty of German at the University of Saint Thomas, in Saint Paul, MN. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Chicago, with an emphasis in Film and Romany Studies. She currently teaches film, literature, and languages classes, and writes about film.
Hilde Hoffmann is DAAD Visiting Professor at the Department for German Scandinavian and Dutch, University of Minnesota. Research interests: visual culture; media & film theory, documentary film, media & memory, postcolonial theory. Her latest project is on the historical legacies and current problems of Antiziganism in Europe, with focus on the imagination and instrumentalization of the figure of the “gypsy” in German society.
Dr. Lynn M. Hooker is Associate Professor of Hungarian Studies at Indiana University, with adjunct appointments in IU’s departments of musicology and ethnomusicology. In January 2016 she will join the faculty of the School of Visual and Performing Arts at Purdue University. Her book Redefining Hungarian Music from Liszt to Bartók was published in 2013 by Oxford University Press. After beginning her scholarly career working on the history of music and culture through historical documents, she began in 2000 doing systematic fieldwork in both Europe and North America in Hungarian folk and popular music scenes, focusing on the role of Romani performers. She spent spring 2012, returning for follow-up research in summer 2014, in Hungary doing oral history interviews and archival research on the changing environment for “Gypsy music” in Hungary in the socialist and post-socialist periods.
Ragip Jasharaj, 58 years old, lives in Münster, Germany and is an English teacher. He is a Rrom from Kosovo but holds German citizenship. Music, flowers, books, and women are his life. He is also a sports enthusiast.
Paromita Kar is the first to complete a PhD degree in Dance Studies in Canada (2014, York University Department of Dance). She also has a Master's Degree in Dance from York University's Dance Department (2008), and a B.A (Honours) in History and Theatre from Queen's University (2006). She is a professional dance artist of classical Indian dance, as well as dances of Central Asia, and is a featured dancer with Dilan Dance Company, dancing traditional folk dances of Anatolian, Kurdish and Romani cultures. She has been a guest lecturer in York University's Department of Music and Department of Dance and has conducted dance workshop for the Ontario Folk Dance Association. Her website is paromitakar.wix.com/danseuse.
Cynthia Levine-Rasky is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology, Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada where she teaches courses on racialization, inequality, research methods, and other areas. Having written on whiteness studies for over a decade, Cynthia’s published Whiteness Fractured in 2013. Her research interests have turned to the Canadian Roma. A book entitled Writing the Roma is in progress for 2016. Covering the history of the Roma in Canada, conditions in Europe from which Roma are fleeing and claiming refugee status in Canada, Canadian refugee policy, and community building in Toronto, the book builds on over three years of fieldwork at the Roma Community Centre.
Laura Ligouri is a coordinator at the Saxelab Social Cognitive Neuroscience and the Senior Advisor to the Neuroscience & Social Conflict Initiative, an MIT & Beyond Conflict joint project. Laura holds a dual MA in Psychology and Cultural Anthropology and is interested in understanding the underlying psychological structure of collective victimization and how this impacts dimensions of inter-group bias and violent conflict. She would like to understand the bidirectional, mutual constitution of culture and neurobiological processes that give rise to mental representations of collective victimization and the way in which this translates to behavior. Within this realm, Laura would like to investigate how perceived social exclusion may directly contribute towards an increased sense of collective victimization. Within her research to understand inter-group conflict, Laura is also interested in narrative and the central role narratives play within in-group identity and the concretization of specific group stances during conflict. Research seeks to elucidate the psychological mechanisms underlying in-group narrative formation and promulgation in order to gain a deeper insight as to the ways narrative work (e.g. NGOs) impacts cognition.
Ian MacMillen recently completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Oberlin College and Conservatory, where he has taught in the Ethnomusicology and Russian and East European Studies Programs, and will begin a new position as Assistant Professor of Music at Whitman College this Fall. He holds a B.A. in Music Theory from Pomona College and a Ph.D. in the Anthropology of Music from the University of Pennsylvania. His primary research, which has been funded by an ACLS Dissertation Research Fellowship, an ARSC Research Grant, and Powers Travel Grants from Oberlin College, focuses on interracial and transnational connections through music - particularly popular and traditional tambura chordophone music in multiethnic communities of post-conflict Croatia, Serbia, and Bosnia. He is currently writing a book on this topic under the provisional title of "Playing It Dangerously: National Intimates, Race, and Affect in Croatian Tambura Music" and his research also appears or is forthcoming in the journals Ethnomusicology, The Yearbook for Traditional Music, Current Musicology, Bulgarian Musicology, Film & History, and Balkanistica.
Jud Nirenberg is chairperson of the board of the National Roma Center in Macedonia and is Director of PRADAN USA, an organization focused on poverty alleviation and minrity community development in India. He has been director of the Open Society Institute's Roma Program (the largest philanthropic fund for Romani civil society), a guest lecturer on Roma issues at the State Department's Foreign Service Institute, CEO of Europe's largest consortium of Romani organization, the European Roma and Travelers Forum and a Roma and Sinti Issues Officer at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). He has worked as an international development consultant in countries including Afghanistan, Libya, and Kenya as well as places more pertinent to Roma issues. He is the author of Gypsy Movements (Schlimmer Publishing), co-author/editor of Gypsy Sexuality: Romani and Outsider Perspectives on Intimacy (Clambake Press) and a co-author of Romani Politics in Contemporary Europe (Palgrave-MacMillan). Jud has a BA in international politics from The American University (Washington, DC), MBA from the Ecole Superieure de Gestion (Paris) and a certificate in leadership development methodology from Harvard University (Cambridge, MA).
Shayna Plaut, PhD, is interested in how people represent themselves in their own media -- with a particular interest in Peoples who do not fit neatly within the traditional notions of the nation-state. Shayna has researched and worked with Romani media, activists and civil society since 2001. She has primarily worked in the Balkans (especially Macedonia) as well as Hungary. Shayna’s works spans academia, journalism and advocacy; her academic work has been published by Alternatives Global Local Political, the European Educational Research Journal, International Journal for Human Rights among others as well as chapters in Routledge, I.B. Tauris and SAGE. Shayna teaches at the University of British Columbia and Simon Fraser University. In addition, she is currently the Research Manager for Strangers at Home, a project of the Global Reporting Centre. Shayna received her PhD from the University of British Columbia MA from the University of Chicago and her BA from Antioch College and refused to color inside the lines.
Presenter and Romani Dance Instructor, VOR co-founder, President, and Artistic Director Sani Rifati is a Rom from Kosovo who immigrated to the United States in 1993. Sani is a researcher and teacher specializing in Romani dances of the Balkans; he has taught at many international camps and festivals. Sani has broadened the scope of VOR events, organizing the 2002 Herdeljezi Benefit Concert in Kosovo and managing VOR's Romani Routes national tours including Esma Redzepova (2004) , Yuri Yunakov (2007), and KAL (2006 and 2008).
Carol Silverman is Professor of Cultural Anthropology and Folklore at the University of Oregon. She has done research with Roma for over 25 years in Balkans, Western Europe and the US. Her research explores the intersection of politics, music, human rights, gender, and state policy with a focus on issues of representation. She is also a performer and teacher of Romani songs, and works with the NGO Voice of Roma. Her book Romani Routes: Cultural Politics and Balkan Music in Diaspora (Oxford University Press, 2012, winner Book Prize, Society for Ethnomusicology) explores how Gypsy music is both an exotic commodity in the world music market and a trope of multiculturalism in cosmopolitan contexts. Her recent research is on the globalization of Gypsy music. In 2015 she has articles appearing in Ethnomusicology Forum, Western Folklore, and the Journal of Folklore Research.
Andrew Singer is a poet, literary translator and editor. He’s worked as a radio host and producer, university instructor of poetry and literary translation, cultural journalist, and news editor. He is director of Trafika Europe, http://trafikaeurope.org, showcasing new literature in English translation from across the 47 countries of Council of Europe, with a quarterly online journal, and introducing (from late 2015) Europe's literary radio station, free online. By celebrating what is best in new writing across the many cultures of Europe, the hope is to help encourage a more open sense of belonging together and a stronger attractive bond continent-wide.
Dr. Nidhi Trehan holds a PhD from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and was an ESRC Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the School of Public Policy and Political Science, University College London from 2008 to 2010. Active in the areas of human rights and social policy as a practitioner and academic, she has published in the areas of human rights, identity politics, NGOs/social movements and migration, with a focus on the Romani communities of Europe. She served as an expert witness for the UK Home Office on asylum cases, and has worked with several Romani NGOs. She has consulted for organizations such as the OSCE, the UNHCR, and the Open Society Institute. Dr. Trehan is currently based in India, where she has been a Visiting Fellow at Delhi University and in addition, works in the management of American Montessori Public School, a private, senior secondary school in the New Delhi area.