Organisation

Pakiv Board

The Pakiv Board is the highest organ of ERIAC. The Board oversees the work of ERIAC, safeguards its values and approves the financial and activity plans.

The members of the Pakiv Board are nominated by ERIAC’s founders: the Secretary General of the Council of Europe (one member), the Open Society Institute (one member) and the Alliance pour l’Institut Rom Européenne pour les Arts et la Culture (one member). Further two members have been nominated by the Barvalipe Academy on their first meeting.

Members of the Pakiv Board

Zeljko Jovanovic

Chair of the Board

Zeljko Jovanovic is the director of the Open Society Roma Initiatives Office, which supports the voices and leadership of Roma in making their power felt in the policy-making arena. Jovanovic comes from a family of Roma ethnic background which, through a belief in hard work, self-determination, and education, moved from multi-generational extreme poverty to the middle class in Serbia. Before joining the Open Society Foundations in 2006, he worked for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe on elections and public policy and for Catholic Relief Services on civil society development. He also has established and led a local Roma organisation and community radio programming, as well as volunteered for Roma political parties and protested for democracy during the Milosevic regime in Serbia. He has also trained and mentored non-profit managers, advocates, and leaders internationally. Jovanovic has degrees in law from the University of Belgrade and in public policy from the University of Oxford. He also completed the Executive Education Program on Strategic Management at Harvard University. He is a member of the Aspen Institute network.

Snežana Samardžić-Marković

Member of the Board

Ms. Snežana Samardžić-Marković has been the Director General of Democracy at the Council of Europe since 2012, in charge of the Organisation’s actions promoting democratic innovation, governance, participation, and diversity. Her responsibilities include the policy areas of education and youth, local democracy, cultural policies, election assistance, the protection of human dignity, gender equality, children’s rights, and the rights of minorities, work against discrimination, democratic citizenship, and democratic responses to crisis situations. Previously, Snežana has held numerous positions in the Serbian Government including as Deputy Director in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for Neighbouring Countries, Assistant Minister of Defence (2005-2007) and Co-President of the Serbia-NATO Defence Reform Group, member of the Foundation Board of WADA, Minister of Youth and Sports (2007-2012), and President of the Fund for Young Talents.

Gilda-Nancy Horvath

Member of the Board

Gilda-Nancy Horvath is an artist, journalist, project manager, and communications consultant. She started her career in grassroots projects for the Romani community in Vienna, Austria. Soon after, she started working for the Austrian Public National Broadcaster ORF. She has also written numerous articles for the Romani cause and worked with many international projects connected to Romani activism, art, and politics. After 10 years in front of and behind the camera at ORF, she started educating and qualifying young Romani people in her project: “romblog.at,” where she is the Editor-In-Chief. She is also the co-founder of a record label for Romani music, fatherandbastards.com. Since 2013, she is a member of the Romani Dialogue Platform of the Federal Chancellery of Austria, consulting and discussing the implementation of #RomaStrategy2020.

Nancy Black is the artist alter ego of Gilda Horvath and produced her first song in December 2016, after being threatened by people who had spread false information about Roma in the media; they claimed that all Roma in Austria would give their support to the far-right candidate at the Presidential Elections in Austria on 04 December 2016. Horvath protested against this kind of manipulation and became a target of hate speech and defamation after that. Her rasping “Trushula” was a clear answer; this was the day Nancy Black was born. Nancy Black also produces video mixes, video installations, and digital/visual art and writing texts and poetry with a strong connection to the language Romanes and the situation of Romani people.

Dr. Iulius Rostas

Member of the Board

Dr. Iulius Rostas is a Visiting Professor at the Romani Studies Program. Between August 2016 and July 2019, he served as Chair of Romani Studies/Assistant Professor at Central European University in Budapest. He was an Affiliated Fellow with the Institute for Advanced Studies at CEU, Senior Fellow with the Open Society Foundations Roma Initiatives Office and Visiting Lecturer at the Corvinus University of Budapest. He has worked for the Open Society Foundations, the European Roma Rights Center and the Government of Romania and consulted the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the World Bank, the European Commission, and the Roma Education Fund. Dr. Rostas published “A Task for Sisyphus: Why Europe’s Roma Policies Fail” (CEU Press 2019) and is the editor of “Ten Years After – A History of Roma School Desegregation in Central and Eastern Europe” (CEU Press, 2012). In 2011 he published “Social Inclusion or Exclusion: the Rights of Persons Living with HIV in Moldova” (Cartier Publishing, 2011). He has published articles and book chapters on Roma participation, Romani identity, Roma school desegregation, Romani movement, and civil society.

Sead Kazanxhiu

Member of the Board

Sead Kazanxhiu is a visual artist from southwest Albania. He was trained as a painter at the University of Arts in Tirana (2006 – 2010), where he obtained his bachelor’s degree. Kazanxhiu comes from a family of Roma ethnic minority. This fact has profoundly shaped his childhood years in Baltez, a village nearby Fier, where he was raised in an environment sensitive to social and cultural inequalities. In a community well aware of hierarchical structures and un-privileged positions within a nation-state, the very condition of being an Albanian Roma citizen turned out to be a determining factor for Kazanxhiu’s status of an artist as well as for his overall cultural practice so far. Thus, it comes as no surprise that the issues of prejudice, exclusion, discrimination, and racism have taken center stage both in his artistic and activist work. His uncompromising position with regard to unfair treatment of Roma ethnic group presents but a platform to voice individual dissent about the racially biased dynamics that, unfortunately, continues to shape contemporary European worldviews – on a daily basis, inside and outside of official political arenas. In this sense, his image-making contributes to positive efforts of a single artist to restore the dignity of a community forcefully and unjustly cornered at the outskirts of European democracy. Kazanxhiu is also the founder of STHAN Cultural Centre, and currently, he is following the Albanian School of Political Studies.

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Barvalipe Academy

The Barvalipe Academy is the agenda-setting and strategic body of the Institute which has an advisory and inspirational role, in order to fulfill ERIAC’s objectives.

Barvalipe is composed of 15 members – highly regarded, publicly acknowledged individuals, with competencies in the areas covered by ERIAC activities. Two thirds of the Academy members must openly declare their Romani ethnicity, respecting the diversity among the Romani communities. Gender balance must be ensured.

The first 7 members of the Barvalipe Academy are nominated by ERIAC’s Board “Pakiv”. The remaining 8 members of the Baravlipe Academy are elected by the members through the thematic sections. Each section delegates two representatives to Barvalipe.

Two members of Barvalipe Academy, elected internally, are delegated to the “Pakiv” Board and become a bridge which connects the ERIAC’s associate membership with the Board.

Isaac Blake

Isaac Blake is a proud Gay Romani and has worked as a professional dancer and choreographer. He is currently Executive Director of the Romani Cultural & Arts Company in Cardiff, UK, which is funded by a variety of major funders and government departments.

As Executive Director of the Romani Cultural & Arts Company (RCAC), Isaac has developed arts and performance programmes on Gypsy and Traveller caravan sites with young children and adults, worked in schools and colleges, and promoted arts as a medium for empowerment and advocacy throughout Wales with Gypsy, Roma and Travellers. He has engaged widely with non- Gypsy communities to promote dialogue and improve social cohesion. His leadership and management of the RCAC has seen the organisation grow from a small voluntary group to a major third sector (NGO) agency that leads the Romani and Traveller field in Wales and is one of the major players in Romani and Traveller advocacy and empowerment in the UK.

RCAC Celebrating community strength since 2009. Isaac has also been a Dance Curator, leading a team of academics and researchers in collating appropriate items and artefacts for the RomArchive. The RomArchive was devised as an international digital archive for art of the Roma, and remains a constantly growing collection of art of all types, complemented by historical documents and scholarly texts. Isaac has been instrumental in supporting LGBTQI rights in UK, Europe and beyond, particularly with respect to the Gypsy, Roma & Traveller communities. Isaac has supported LGBTQI Gypsy, Roma & Travellers to attend events internationally and Isaac has personally attended such events to be an advocate and representative of his community and to positively promote LGBTQI. Recently, Isaac co-ordinated and produced the first international LGBTQI GRT spoken history archive; publishing a linked e-book to complement the online archive.

Dr. Maria Bogdan

Chair of the Barvalipe Academy

Dr. Maria Bogdan received her PhD from the Film, Media and Culture Theory Doctoral Program at the Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest in 2018. She wrote her thesis about the media representation of the Roma in Hungary, and developed a multidisciplinary theoretical approach based on cultural studies for analyzing and understanding the position of Roma in the Hungarian society. Her main research interest is related to media representation, the modern forms of racism, and the questions of diversity. She has published numerous articles in English and in Hungarian related to these topics in international and Hungarian journals.

Dr. Bogdan was a visiting researcher at CEU Romani Studies Program in 2018, and prior to that position, she was a researcher at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (2014-2017) and an assistant lecturer at the University of Pécs (2006-2013). She is also a Fulbright Alumna and completed part of her PhD research at Columbia University in New York. She has also studied journalism and film and has worked as a journalist at different media organisations in Hungary. Dr. Bogdan is one of the founding editors of Critical Romani Studies journal and is a member of the ERCF Board which runs Gallery8 – the first Roma contemporary art space in Hungary.

Prof Dr. Ethel Brooks

Professor Dr. Ethel Brooks is an Associate Professor in the Departments of Women’s and Gender Studies and Sociology at Rutgers University, New Jersey. She has conducted research on an host of sites around the world including London, Istanbul, Fall River, San Salvador, Dhaka and York City. Professor Brooks is currently working on two book projects: “Disrupting the Nation: Land Tenure, Productivity and the Possibilities of a Romani Post-Coloniality”, and “(Mis)Recognitions and (Un)Acknowledgements: Visualities, Productivities and the Contours of Romani Feminism”, both of which focus on political economy and cultural production and the increasing violence against Romani (Gypsy) citizens worldwide.

In 2011 Professor Brooks was awarded a prestigious Fulbright-University of the Arts London Distinguished Chair Award and she spent the academic year 2011/2012 at TrAIN – the Research Centre for Transnational Art, Identity and Nation. Part of the award supported Professor Brooks’ delivery of a lecture series in conjunction with the Tate Gallery, London.

Brooks serves as a member of numerous boards and commissions, including the USC Shoah Foundation VHA External Advisory Committee, the RomArchive, the European Roma Rights Centre, and the Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis. She is a member of the US Delegation to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance and its Roma Genocide Working Group.

In 2016, she was appointed by President Obama to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council.

Dr. Ismael Cortés-Gómez

Vice-Chair of the Barvalipe Academy

Dr. Ismael Cortés-Gómez is a political philosopher who currently holds a double academic position as a part-time lecturer at the Unesco Chair of Philosophy (Universitat Jaume I de Castelló) and as a visiting researcher at the Institute DEMOS Paz (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid). Last year he was awarded a postdoctoral position at the Romani Studies Program (Central European University). His research interest focuses on the interrelation among law-culture-politics, by analyzing how ideologies constitute institutional norms, policy frames, and action programs. During his academic career, Dr. Cortés-Gómezhas been a researcher at the School of Critical Theory & Cultural Studies (University of Nottingham), the Institute for the Study of Peace and Conflicts (International University of Andalusia) and the Institute of Human Rights Bartolomé de las Casas (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid).

Dr. Cortés-Gómez has worked as a policy analyst for Open Society Foundations from 2016 to 2018, both with the Budapest and the Brussels office; he also collaborates as an associate researcher with the Brussels-based think tank Centre for European Policy Studies. He has published numerous papers in peer-reviewed journals and op-eds with newspapers such as HuffPost, Le Monde Diplomatique, Euractiv, and El País. His work is deeply engaged with the criticism of new forms of racism and ethnonationalism in the European Union.

David Peña Dorantes

About 25 years ago an unusual pianist coming from a family with a long standing flamenco tradition burst onto the scene. DORANTES (nephew of El Lebrijano, grandson of a highly valued cantaora known as La Perrata) was born in Lebrija (Andalusia, Spain) in 1969 and retains the frankness of someone who is proud of his origins: one of the most important Gitano lineages in Flamenco (the Pena-Perrate-Pinni-Bacân].He started with the guitar, became a regular at flamenco festivals as a guitarist and one day, by Chance, a piano changed his destiny. He enrolled in the Music Conservatory of Seville and in soon his talent began to stand out. At the moment, he indubitably represents one of the most outstanding and innovative contributions to the Spanish musical scene. Dorantes is not only a virtuoso instrumentalist who has turned the piano into a soloist and a reinvigorating element in Andalusian flamenco, he is also a brilliant orchestral composer. His creative force has unleashed a genuine revolution in flamenco music. Dorantes is opening new and coherent paths for this heritage and, in his unstoppable advance, he is bringing it closer to the status of “classical or cultivated music”. All Jiot this while staying adamantly coherent with his roots. Jose Luis Navarro, flamenco professor and
historian, states: “Dorantes is doing with the piano, in leaps and bounds, what Paco de Lucia did with the guitar”. The journalist Mirien Landeta adds “Dorantes is a remembrance of flamenco that looks to the future. He is harmony and rupture. He is technique and sheer virtuosity combined with passion and feeling. He is, like his piano, black and white. Ivory and flesh. Man and music.

Tony Gatlif

Tony Gatlif is an acclaimed French film director, screenwriter, composer, actor, and producer of Romani ethnicity. He was born in Algeria in 1948 and came to France in 1960. Starting in 1981, he has tackled the theme he now explores from film to film: Romani people from all over the world, seduced by this “community in movement” and “of great richness and diversity.” He is best known for his films dealing inspired by Romani arts and culture, including “Latcho Drom” (1993), “Gadjo Dilo” (1997), “Vengo” (2000), “Transylvania” (2006) and “Korkoro” (2009). His 2004 film “Exils” won the Best Director Award at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival. He was made a Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur on 30 March 2015.

Dr. Delia Madalina Grigore

Dr. Delia Mandalina Grigore is a Rromani woman born 1972 in Galaţi, Romania. She holds a Ph.D. in visual arts, with a specialization ethnography-ethnology from the Romanian Academy, Institute of Ethnography and Folklore in 2004. She is a senior reader at the University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, Rromani Language and Literature Section and the President of the Roma Center “Amare Rromentza”. She works in education, Rromology research (e.g. ethnography, ethnology, ethnolinguistics, folklore, oral history, and literature) and Rromani culture fields. She is the author of several works, including Introduction in the Study of Traditional Culture Elements of the Contemporary Rromani Identity (2001, University of Bucharest – CREDIS, Bucharest) and Rromanipen – Keystones of Rromani Culture (2011, Amare Rromentza, Bucharest). She is a team member for the presentation of Rromani Literature in Romania for RomArchive.

Gilda Horvath

Nedjo Osman

Nedjo Osman was born in Skopje/Macedonia, in the former Yugoslavia. Osman began his acting career at the Roma theater Pralipe in Skopje. After graduating from the Film and Theater Academy in Novi Sad, he worked as a theater actor at the National Theater KPGT in Subotica and made guest appearances on the stage of the Serbian National Theaters in Novi Sad and JDP Belgrade.
After the outbreak of the war in the Balkans, he came to Germany as a member of the ensemble of the Pralipe Theater at the Theater Mülheim an der Ruhr, where his leading role received outstanding reviews in magazines and newspapers such as Theater Heute, Frankfurter Allgemeine, Frankfurter Rundschau, Süddeutsche Zeitung etc. He took leading roles in many productions from classical to modern for which he received numerous awards.
Osman has performed at various international festivals in Europe, awarded with best critiques as well as numerous awards: the Golden Laurel Wreath at the International Theater Festival MESS Sarajevo in 1991 and for the leading role of Sebastian in the play “Anita Berber” at the Theater Festival in Vojvodina in 1997. In 2003, for the first time, the Yul Brynner Prize was awarded in Berlin and Nedjo Osman was awarded for directing the play “Medea” as well as in his capacity as a Roma actor. In Zagreb in 2017, he received the “Šaip Jusuf” lifetime achievement award. The prize is awarded for the contribution to the development of the Roma community in the field of culture, art and education.
In 1996, after leaving Pralipe Theater, he was a guest actor in many German city theaters such as Cologne, Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, Saarbrücken and many others.
Since 1996 he has been a freelance actor and director and together with Nada Kokotovic acts as the artistic director of the Theater TKO / Choreodrama – Romano Theater in Cologne.
As a journalist, he directed and moderated programs in Romanes at Radio Multi-Kulti in Berlin from 2000 to 2002 and at Deutsche Welle in Bonn from 2002 to 2014.
As a translator into Romanes and as a poet, Nedjo Osman has discovered his passion for writing at an early age. His inspiration is the street, Roma inhabited neighborhoods, experiences with non-Roma and love as a source of beauty. His poems have been published in Serbia, Turkey, Macedonia, Croatia and Germany.
As a long-standing translator of Roma culture, Osman has also acted as a social worker and mediator in various Roma projects in Cologne and many other German cities.
For years Osman has been trying to awaken Roma interest in art as one of the most important elements of Roma culture and identity. He has been working continuously to promote Roma culture and Roma theater among non-Roma in order to change their minds and change the image of Roma.

Romani Rose

Romani Rose (born 1946 at Heidelberg, Germany) is a Romani activist who lost 13 relatives in the Holocaust of the Nazi purges against the Romani people and Jews and is the head of the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma. During the founding of the Central Council in 1982 he was voted to the position of Chairman by the delegates of the member organisations – then 9, now 16 state and regional associations – and since then has been confirmed in his post every four years at the member meetings. From 1991, Rose took over the management of the Documentation and Culture Centre of German Sinti and Roma in Heidelberg. For years he has been known by the federal and state governments for his resoluteness and for his persistent and unyielding work.

Together with the Chairpersons of the National Minorities in Germany, Rose leads the Minority Council, which was founded on September 9, 2004. It is the union of the umbrella organisations of the four national minorities which belong to the German nation and have always been resident and autochthonous here. For three decades –since June 1979 to be exact – he has led the work for the civil rights of German Sinti and Roma before the eyes of the German as well as the international public; he has also fought for their protection from racism and discrimination, for compensation for the survivors of the Holocaust – at the same time announcing the magnitude and the historical importance of the genocide of 500,000 Sinti and Roma in National Socialist occupied Europe. In May 1995, in cooperation with the member organisations of the Central Council, Rose achieved recognition for German Sinti and Roma as a national minority in Germany with their own minority language, connected with their goal of equal participation in social and political life.

Dr. Iulius Rostas

Dr. Santino Spinelli

Santino Spinelli (he is well known as Alexian, his artistic name), is an Italian Rom. Musician, composer, poet, essayist and university teacher, he was awarded the title of Commendatore of the Italian Republic (one of the highest awards conferred by the President of the Italian Republic, he is the only rom in Italy to reveived this important title), as well as the Emilio Lussu Carreer Prize. In 2016 he was awarded the honorary citizenship of Laterza (Taranto). He founded the European Peace Orchestra by elevating Romani folk music to a symphonic level. Graduated in Modern Foreign Languages and Literatures and in Musicology at the Alma Mater Studiorum – University of Bologna, he is the author of numerous publications and articles, including “Roma, free people” (2012), “Roma, these unknowed people” (2016), “A community to know” ( 2018),”The truths denied” (2021).

Miguel Ángel Vargas

Miguel Ángel Vargas (born 1978, Spain) is a stage director, poet, actor, and researcher. In his work, inspired by the poetics of the old, he uses material and aesthetic elements of the past to influence contemporary contexts; from his point of view, nothing – material or not – dies free of life and of a certain magical influence, especially in the universe of Theater. He earned his degree in Art History from the University of Seville, studied Stage Direction in the the Instituto del Teatro de Sevilla, and currently researching the representation of Roma theater artists on stage (Sevilla and Cádiz, 1746-1845), while also collaborating with international organisations like ERIAC or Central European University for the Roma emancipation through culture and art. Miguel has performed as a theater actor on several stages across Europe; starting in 2001 with Teatro del Velador and Teatro del Duende (Spain), Newcastle Northern Stage (London), and the historic Roma Theater Pralipe (Germany). As well as occupying different positions in the field of being an opera technician at the Teatro Maestranza, a technical director of the Teatro Quintero, and a TV stage manager for the television program Ratones Coloraos in Canal Sur TV. During 2010, he was the production manager of the show Flamenco Hoy, by international filmmaker Carlos Saura. In 2012, he was awarded Young Creators Award by the Instituto de Cultura Gitana of the Ministry of Culture of Spain.

Mihaela Zatreanu

Mihaela Zatreanu is probably one of the best Romani language teaching experts among the Roma with a broad outlook at the Romani language field. A graduate of the Pedagogical High School and Foreign Language Faculty in Bucharest, Mihaela has worked in Roma education for the past 15 years, first as a primary school teacher, then as a trainer for Roma and non-Roma educators, and educational inspector at the Ministry of Education. Mihaela Zatreanu has been developing the first curriculum for Romani language in Romania and continued her activity authoring of textbooks, publishing a series of textbooks for Romani language. During 5 years as an educational inspector in the Ministry of Education and Research, she contributed to the designing of the legislative policies for increasing the school participation of Roma, has been monitoring and guiding local programs for supplementary school assistance, and introduced the school mediator for the first time in Romania. Mihaela Zatreanu had an important role in introducing Romani language and history in state schools at national level and for the allocation of special places for Roma students at high school and university level. At the European level Mihaela Zatreanu has been working in cooperation with the Council of Europe as a Chief Executive Officer at the European Roma and Travellers Forum. She was acting several years as the educational expert for the Council of Europe, contributing to the development of the policy paper for the education of Roma children in Europe, developing the Guide for Roma school mediators, teaching materials for preschool education and the Curriculum Framework for Romania Language together with a group of European experts. She has been CoE trainer for school mediation and the National Program Officer of ROMACT program in Romania.

Dr. Jana Horváthová, on behalf of the Museum of Roma Culture in Brno

The Museum of Roma Culture in Brno was established in 1991, their first permanent exhibit was opened on 01 December 2005. The Museum also offers a space for research and community gatherings. The MRC holds a unique position in the world, due to its long existence and collection and documentation work and is a strong partner of ERIAC. Owing to the experience and the team of experts available at the Museum, the cooperation between the MRC and ERIAC is beneficial and enriching.

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Team of ERIAC

Tímea Junghaus

Executive Director

Tímea Junghaus is an art historian and contemporary art curator. She started in the position of Executive Director of the European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture in September 2017. Previously, Junghaus was Research Fellow of the Working Group for Critical Theories at the Institute for Art History at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (2010-2017). She has researched and published extensively on the conjunctions of modern and contemporary art with critical theory, with particular reference to issues of cultural difference, colonialism, and minority representation. She is completing her Ph.D. studies in Cultural Theory at the Eötvös Lóránd University, Budapest.

In recognition of her curatorial activities, Junghaus received the Kairos – European Cultural Price from the Alfred Toepfer Stiftung F.V.S., in 2008. Her curatorial works include the Roma component of the Hidden Holocaust- exhibition in the Budapest Kunsthalle (2004), Paradise Lost – the First Roma Pavilion at the 52nd Venice Contemporary Art Biennale (2007), the Archive and Scholarly Conference on Roma Hiphop (2010), The Romani Elders and the Public Intervention for the Unfinished Memorial to the Sinti and Roma Murdered Under the National Socialist Regime in the frame of the 7th Berlin Biennale (2012), the (Re-)Conceptualizing Roma Resistance – exhibition and education program in Hellerau, Dresden (2015) and the Goethe Institute, Prague (2016). She is the curator of the Visual Arts Section for RomArchive – Digital Archive of the Roma, funded by Kulturstiftung des Bundes (2015-2018).

Junghaus was the founding director of Gallery8 – Roma Contemporary Art Space (www.gallery8.org) in Budapest (2013-2017), the winner of the 2014 Catalyst Contemporary Art Award (of Tranzit Hungary) and the 2014 Otto Pankok Prize awarded by the For Roma Foundation of German writer and Literary Nobel Laureate, Günter Grass

Anna Mirga-Kruszelnicka

Deputy Director

Dr. Anna Mirga-Kruszelnicka is an anthropologist and a Roma activist, born in 1985 in Cracow, Poland. She earned her Ph.D. in Social and Cultural Anthropology at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) in 2016. She holds an MA in European Integration from UAB and an MA in Comparative Studies of Civilizations from the Jagiellonian University in Cracow (UJ). She is the author of policy evaluations, reports, and articles, and is the co-editor of the “Education for Remembrance of the Roma Genocide: Scholarship, Commemoration and the Role of Youth“ (Libron, 2015) and “Re-thinking Roma Resistance throughout History: Recounting Stories of Strength and Bravery” (ERIAC, 2020).

She has been an employee, member, founder, and collaborator of numerous Roma organisations in Poland and Spain. From 2008 to 2012 she was the European project coordinator at the Federation of Roma Associations in Catalonia (FAGIC). From 2013 to 2015 she was an Open Society Foundations Roma Initiatives Fellow, conducting a comparative study of the Roma associative movements in various countries of Latin America and Europe. From 2015 to 2017 she was the coordinator and curator of the Academic Section (aka. Roma Civil Rights Movement Section) in the RomArchive – Digital Archive of the Roma. Between 2017-2018 she was a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow of the Romani Studies Program at the Central European University (CEU) in Budapest. She serves ad the deputy director of ERIAC since January 2018.

Joanna Khandjieva

Project Assistant

As an activist and social scientist, Joanna Khandjieva has taken part in several, mainly educational projects in Hungary and India. Born in Sofia, grown up in Budapest, and living in Berlin, she can easily relate to the trans-national initiative of ERIAC to bring people together. Up until now, the focus of her work has been primarily the support and empowerment of so-called peripheral communities. She has worked with Roma communities in North-Eastern Hungary and is currently coordinating a project in the Indian Himalayas. She moved to Berlin to pursue her studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology, with a focus of inter-cultural cooperation and post-colonial power relations all over the globe. As a project assistant for the ERIAC team, she is supporting the team with her administrative experience and inter-cultural vision, while learning about as well as enjoying the results of the outstanding and empowering cultural and social achievements of the Romani communities and individuals.

Neven Mesec

Finance Manager

Neven started his professional engagement in Roma inclusion during his Erasmus+ experience gained at the Roma Decade Secretariat Foundation back in 2015. Originally from Varazdin, Croatia, Neven has been actively engaged for many years on various projects dealing with social inclusion and youth participation at local and regional level. Neven has a BA in Cultural Management and is currently completing his master studies in Political Economy at the Berlin School of Economics and Law, where he specializes in social policies and feminist economics. Currently, he is in the process of writing his MA thesis on the topic of: Impact of austerity measures on Roma Inclusion in Western Balkans – Serbia and North Macedonia. Besides his formal education, Neven has also participated in various seminars and educational trainings on the topic of human rights, equality, and social justice.

Livia Marschall

Campaign Manager

With a background in cultural anthropology, Livia’s professional interests lie at the intersection of education, art and community engagement. She joined ERIAC’s transnational census campaign initiative in 2021. Prior to that, she was program manager at Central European University’s Global Policy Academy. She has worked as a curator at Gallery8–Roma Contemporary Art Space, and has been involved in numerous community-focused projects throughout her career. She is also co-founder and volunteer of the Gólya Community House’s “Neighbourhood to Community” program in Budapest’s eighth district. She holds an MA in cultural anthropology and English language and literature from Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE) in Hungary.

Katarzyna Pabijanek

Program Manager

Katarzyna Pabijanek is philanthropy and nonprofit consultant, critic and researcher. Her research has focused on feminist art theory and practice, body art and performance art from Central and Eastern Europe. Before joining ERIAC, Katarzyna lectured in the Gender Studies Program of the Polish Academy of Sciences and worked for the Open Society Foundations, where she coordinated narrative change activities on Roma health and supported grantees in Europe working to use art for social change. She holds MA degrees in linguistics from Eötvös Loránd University and in gender studies from CEU, and a PhD in cultural studies and neophilology from the University of Social Sciences and Humanities in Warsaw.

Emese Molnár

Project Coordinator

Emese Molnár is a sociologist by training with a professional interest and formation on the crossroads of intersecting fields from the more theoretical such as gender and equal opportunities studies, towards the more performative like art and activism. Between the years 2016-2018 she has been a fellow of the Hungarian-Argentinean exchange program of the Argentine Ministry of Education, doing a Master’s degree in Curatorial Studies in Visual Arts at the National University of Tres de Febrero (UNTREF) in Buenos Aires, Argentina. As a production assistant she participated in the organization, production and montage of the exhibition “Take Me, I´m Yours” curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist and Christian Boltanski in the framework of BIENALSUR, the International Biennial of Contemporary Art of South America organized by UNTREF in 2017 in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Part of her freelance curating endeavors includes a virtual photography exposition held at the KORUNK Gallery in Cluj Napoca, Romania in February 2021 (NY City Visions – Pre-COVID Places and Non-Places). She has been curator in residence at the Museumsquartier Vienna in April 2019, with the support of Tranzit Austria and Erste Stiftung, and beforehand she has contributed to the collective exhibition “100 Years of Parallel Dialouge”, reflecting on the transformative changes of the past decades that affected the different ethnic groups living together in the CEE region (Art Museum of Cluj, Romania in august 2018).
Emese comes from the field of social inclusion and empowerment, having worked 4 years at the Open Society Foundations in Budapest, Hungary. Within the Roma Initiatives program her greatest contribution was the organization of professional meetings and conferences around the theme of anti-gypsyism that paved the way to the founding of the European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture (ERIAC).
She participated in several socio-cultural development projects implemented by ITD / CEPS Projectes Sociales in Barcelona, Spain working on issues of migration, social participation, European capitals of culture and storytelling. In 2011 she was part of the organizing committee of the International Theatre Festival “Interferences” held at the Hungarian Theater in Cluj, Romania.
She joined ERIAC in August 2021 as Project Coordinator for the Roma Pavilion at the 59th Venice Art Biennale to be held between April and November 2022 and is also involved in RomaMOMA, which is a contemporary art project initiating a forum for collaborative reflection on a future Roma Museum of Contemporary Art.

Marc Hörler

Office Manager Berlin

Marc Norbert Hörler is an artist, writer, researcher and perfumer born in 1989 in Appenzell, Switzerland. He has a background in art history and comparative linguistics and holds a BA in Fine Arts from the Art Institute, FHNW Academy of Art and Design Basel, Switzerland (2016) and an MA in Art Praxis from the Dutch Art Institute (DAI), ArtEZ University of the Arts Arnhem, Netherlands (2020), where he graduated with his thesis “phonemic transmutations. healing, world-making and glamour in performances of enchantment.” In an artistic practice based on interdisciplinary research, he uses voice(s), smell and language to tell stories that investigate the ideological, historical, material and speculative aspects of language´s connection to the somatic on a multisensory level. Marc is the author of several publications of speculative fiction, poetry and experimental story-telling, often in collaboration with fellow cultural creators.
Marc has been the co-founder and vice-president of the last socialist party section in Switzerland and has been involved both communally and nationally in campaigning and organisation. Furthermore, he has a rich background of working in the cultural sector, where he has been active as an art educator, art handler and exhibition technician and has been working in environments from galleries to museums as well as educational institutions. Marc carried out the initial archival processing of “ACT 2004-2018” as part of the Media Library at FHNW Academy of Art and Design, consisting of about 14´000 different documents and media and mapping more than 500 works created over the course of this performance festival as a joint initiative of Swiss art academies.
Marc Norbert Hörler joined ERIAC in his capacity as Office Manager in May 2021.

Andrea Petrus

Project Coordinator

Andrea Petrus from Menorca (Spain) moved to Barcelona to study Advertising and Public Relations (UB). In 2018, she went for an international exchange at the Universidad San Martín de Porres in Lima (Peru), after that, she travelled for half a year as a backpacker around Peru and Colombia, where she discovered that she wanted to be involved in culture. In April 2019 she moved to Berlin. Andrea enrolled ERIAC in February 2020 as an intern and a year later she has been promoted to Project Coordinator. She is also coursing a postgraduate diploma in International Cooperation and Cultural Management (Universitat de Barcelona) and developing her final project regarding the Roma Holocaust.

Jadranka Ivkovic

ERIAC Serbia Executive Director

Coming from the Open Society Foundation Serbia Jadranka Ivkovic started in the position of Director of the European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture Serbia in July 2021. She has been a program coordinator of the OSF, Serbia since 1997 and worked on various issues such as education, protecting children from abuse, public health, social welfare, but has continuously been engaged in the social inclusion of Roma with an emphasis on access to rights, development and implementation of practical inclusive and anti-discriminatory policies. Since the beginning of her work at the Foundation, she has mostly dealt with the development of the Roma civil society and the Roma movement, as well as the empowerment of the Roma communities to advocate for their interests and participate in decision-making processes.

On behalf of OSF Serbia, jointly with the colleagues from the World bank Jadranka was active in preparation and establishing the Decade of Roma Inclusion in Serbia. She also facilitated the Government’s working groups for developing the Action plans for the Decade of the Roma Inclusion and furthermore the expert team which had created the baseline study for the Strategy of Roma inclusion (2016-2025). Thanks to this baseline study Roma culture are integrated into the Strategy as a cross cutting issue. She sought Roma culture to always find a place in the Foundation’s programs, and encouraged the realization of many projects, among others publishing Roma fairy tales and the Romany language dictionary, creating Roma cultural policy, conducting research on Roma cultural potentials etc. As an educational specialist, which is her professional background and expertise, Jadranka initiated and contributed to the development of comprehensive programs targeting equity in education and led or participated in several research on equal access to quality education of Roma.

Previously, she worked as a counselor for preschool education, participated in development of UNICEF’s psycho-social and nonviolent communication programs and conducted trainings for teachers all over the country.

Editor and co-author of several policy studies, teachers’ manuals and awarded interactive picture books for children. Graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Belgrade.

Bratislav Mitrović

ERIAC Serbia Office Manager

Bratislav is from Arilje (Serbia), a student of final year at the University of Novi Sad, Faculty of technical science, department of Graphical engineering and Design. At the moment, finalizing undergraduate dissertation on How multimedia affect websites, focusing on preparing multimedia for use on the website implementing rules of search engine optimization (SEO).

In 2017. he participated in cultural exchange program Work and Travel USA where he spent 4 months in Denali National Park, working, backpacking and exploring untouched nature of Alaska, USA and another month traveling through the USA visiting different cities.

Bratislav participated in entrepreneurship contest, organized by Junior Achievement Serbia, where he won second place in Regional competition, qualifying to National competition where he won third place.

Interns and Volunteers

Eglantina Aliu

Project Assistant

Eglantina graduated with a degree in Finance Banking from the European University of Tirana, Albania. Eglantina also finished one of the Roma preparatory programs with the support of Romani Studies Program, at the Central European University in Budapest. During her studies in Albania she was exposed and volunteer through different Roma NGOs, mostly at the Institute of Romani Culture in Albania, which inspired her to join the European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture. As a Roma woman at ERIAC, she is excited to support and learn how Roma women are expressing, engaging, protecting, and promoting their knowledge and culture through arts in a contemporary sense.