As a transatlantic echo of the complex and painful legacies brought forth by the Black History Month, we centered this week's conversation of our Feraru Conferences Online on the traumatic journey of another racial minority, the Roma people of Eastern Europe, from their historical emergence in Medieval Europe through the Holocaust to the challenging process of social emancipation and nation-building. Our interlocutor was Cristiana Grigore, the founder of Columbia University’s Roma People’s Project, a leading expert whose scholarship is at once informed by personal experience and in-depth field work.
CRISTIANA GRIGORE is a research scholar of Roma ethnicity and the founder of the Roma People's Project at Columbia University, an initiative aiming to spotlight Roma people and expand Roma studies by examining topics such as identity and stigma, mobility and displacement. She is also the co-founder of Link Education and Practice (LEAP), a nonprofit organization which promotes non-formal education to improve employability. Cristiana earned her BA in Psychology from the University of Bucharest in 2007. As a Fulbright scholar, she graduated from Vanderbilt University with an MA in International Education Policy and Management in 2012. She frequently writes and speaks about Roma people in a global context. Her work has been featured by The New York Times, CNN, Al Jazeera America, NPR, Voice of America etc.
Photo credit: Sandi Horvat