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
Dr. Anna Mirga-Kruszelnicka is an anthropologist and 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 book Education for Remembrance of the Roma Genocide: Scholarship, Commemoration and the Role of Youth (Libron, 2015).
She has been an employee, member, founder, and collaborator of numerous Roma organizations 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.
After growing up in Budapest, Zsófia Bihari moved to Berlin and earned a Bachelor Degree at Humboldt University in Cultural History and Theory (2013-2017). During these years she worked as a freelancer in the field of the non-formal historical education. 2016-2018 Zsófia was a research assistant at Humboldt University focusing on Diaspora Studies. She is currently finishing her studies at the Freie University’s Eastern European Studies Master Program. As project coordinator at ERIAC she was responsible for the coordination of the FUTUROMA exhibition at the 58th La Biennale di Venezia and other international activities of ERIAC.
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.
Prior to his engagement with ERIAC, Almir Huseini contributed to the UN-International labor organization (ILO-DWT/CO), European Centre for Minority Issues, UNICEF, and UNCHR in Serbia in the capacity of a consultant, researcher/evaluator, educational social worker, implementing projects involving a high level of coordination and networking as well as intensive communication and cooperation with different stakeholders on the local, national, and international level in the Central and Eastern European (CEE) region with various social and political actors. As a Roma person, he invested his interest in the protection and promotion of Roma rights and culture and those were the main reasons to study Sociology, participate in Romani Studies Program (RSP) and graduate in Public Policy at the Central European University.
Born and raised in Cluj (Romania), she studied design at the local art university, then completed her master’s degree in art and design management at the Moholy-Nagy University in Budapest (Hungary). She worked as a curator in Gallery8 Budapest, as a content manager for RomArchive, and as project manager for youth and cultural organizations in Cluj. Founder and initiator of various local and international projects, such as Calabalac, Blokkgallery, Lungs of Europe. Currently she is the coordinator of the ERIAC Roma Cultural History Initiative.
Interns and Volunteers
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.
She moved from Menorca (Spain) 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 during half a year with a backpack around Peru and Colombia volunteering also in a project in the Peruvian Amazon rainforest.
In April 2019 she moved to Berlin, she has been working and studying German until she enrolled ERIAC in February 2020. Andrea wants do develop her knowledge on the field of Cultural Management, that’s why she will start in the next months a Master of International Culture Cooperation and Management.