Email: romanistudies@mac.com

Dr Marsh is based in Istanbul, Turkey where he has been working with the Romani and Gypsy communities of the region since 2002. He gained his PhD in Romani Studies from Greenwich University (London), his MA (South East European Studies) from SOAS/SSEES and completed his BA Hons (1st) in East European History at SSEES, London. He has also been a Gypsy/Traveller Education Support Teacher in London. He teaches courses on Romani history and culture, trans-national forced migration, refugee studies and human rights and children’s rights in Turkey, Sweden, the UK, Albania, Kosovo, Rumania, Cyprus and Egypt. He is a frequent and accredited expert for the European Commission, Council of Europe and the European Parliament and has published widely on the issues of Roma rights and Romani children’s rights, Romani history, language and cultures. He has also been a consultant for a number of major NGO’s (European Roma Rights Centre, Save the Children, Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly) and has produced many research reports in both capacities. He has also acted as an expert witness in a number of refugee cases involving Romani and Gypsy people from Turkey, the Balkans and Egypt seeking asylum in the UK. He is of English Romany-Traveller origins himself.

Email: christian.giordano@unifr.ch

Dr Christian Giordano is an anthropologist and sociologist, who has been Professor of Ethnology and Social Anthropology and Head of the Institute of Social Anthropology at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland since 1989. Giordano studied anthropology, art history and Romance languages at the University of Heidelberg, as well as law and economics at the University of Bern. He obtained his PhD in sociology from Heidelberg University in 1973, habilitation in cultural anthropology and European ethnology from Frankfurt University in 1987 and doctor honoris causa from the University of Timişoara West University of Timișoara in 1999.

Giordano is co-founder of Anthropological Journal on European Cultures and he is chief editor of Freiburg Studies in Social Anthropology and part of the editorial board of the journals Ethnologia Balkanica, Focaal, Etudes Rurales, Eastern European Countryside, Freiburger Sozialanthropologische Studien (Lit Verlag), Europeanist Studies in Socio-Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology (Lit Verlag), Culture and Society: Journal for Social Research, Urbanities (Ashgate, Farnham). His publications have been published in the following languages: German, French, Italian, English, Spanish, Polish, Croatian, Bulgarian, Romanian, Lithuanian, Serbian, Macedonian, Russian.

His main research interests are political anthropology, economic anthropology, historical anthropology, and he has done field research in mediterranean societies (1966-1986), Poland and Paraguay (1986-1989), Bulgaria and Romania (1989-2007), and Malaysia (1996-2011).

Email: melchinova@nbu.bg

Assoc Prof Dr Magdalena Elchinova is based in Sofia and works at the New Bulgarian University, Department of Anthropology. She teaches courses on history of anthropology, political anthropology, kinship, migration, ritual and religion, etc. She has been the head of the Department of Anthropology at NBU since 2003. Dr Elchinova studied Bulgarian language and literature at the Sofia University, where she obtained her MA degree. She got her PhD from the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences in 1992, her habilitation in ethnology from the same academy in 1998, and her habilitation in cultural anthropology from the New Bulgarian University in 2005. Her previous affiliations were as a researcher and senior researcher at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and as an associate professor of ethnology at the South-West University in Blagoevgrad and the Plovdiv University, Bulgaria. Magdalena Elchinova has specialized anthropology at the Central European University in Budapest (1998), the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies (in 1999 and in 2001-2002), and at the University of Illinois at Chicago (as a Fulbright researcher in 2006). 

Her main research interest is in the study of ethnic and religious minorities in Bulgaria (Turks, Orthodox Christians and Muslims), migration to and from Bulgaria, border studies. She has conducted fieldwork in various parts of Bulgaria, Republic of Macedonia, Turkey and the U.S. Her latest research is on the Bulgarian-born Turks, re-settlers in Turkey since 1989 and on the refugees from Asia and Africa to Bulgaria. Magdalena Elchinova has published in a number of national and international journals and volumes.

Email: maria.popova@mcgill.ca

Maria Popova, PhD in Government (Harvard University), is Associate Professor of Political Science at McGill University, Montreal, Canada. She is also a faculty associate of the European Union Center of Excellence (EUCE) and the Institute for the Study of International Development (ISID) at McGill. She is the author of Politicized Justice in Emerging Democracies: A Study of Courts in Russia and Ukraine (Cambridge University Press, 2012), the winner of the 2012-2013 American Association for Ukrainian Studies prize for best book in the fields of Ukrainian history, politics, language, literature, and culture.  Her research focuses on judicial independence, the rule of law, and corruption in the post-Communist region.  She is currently working on a book manuscript on the prosecution of high-level political corruption in seven Eastern European EU members.  She also follows and writes about post-Maidan judicial reform in Ukraine.

Email: stoilkov@ufl.edu

Dr Stoilkova holds a Ph.D. in Social Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley. Her research interests lie in the intersection of post-socialist studies  of contemporary mobility. She has published on various topics related to international migration, including the effects of mass emigration on Bulgaria after the fall of socialism. Other themes include trans-nationalism, human trafficking, gender; also the  anthropology of Europe  and post-socialism.