CURRENT STAFF

Course Co-ordinator and Curriculum Development Project Leader

Dr Ilona Klimova-Alexander

Ilona holds MA in International Relations and European Studies from the Central European University in Budapest (1998) and MPhil and PhD in International Relations from the University of Cambridge (1999 and 2003). She has taught and/or developed courses on international relations and nationalism at the University of New South Wales, Macquarie University, University of Sydney and the University of Cambridge. She has worked as a consultant for the World Bank, Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), Council of Europe, European Union’s Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia and International Centre for Migration Policy Development. She is a Member of the Advisory Board of the Association for the Study of Nationalities and Member of the Editorial Board of Nationalities Papers. She has published extensively on issues of human and minority rights, nationalism, political participation, and migration. Her most recent publication is a monograph entitled ‘The Romani Voice in World Politics: The United Nations and Non-State Actors’ (Ashgate: Aldershot, 2005).

Contact details: ilona(at)cantab.net

Course Lecturers

PhDr Laura Laubeova

Laura graduated in Education and Psychology (MA, 1985) at the Philosophical Faculty of Charles University in Prague where she also obtained a Philosophiae Doctoris degree (PhDr) in 1986. She has been active in several non-governmental organisation since 1990, served as an Executive Director of the New School Foundation aiming to improve education of Romani children and currently is chairing an international network Globea - Transborder Initiative for Tolerance and Human Rights. She was a visiting fellow at the University of Cambridge (1997/98) and University of Oxford (2002 and 2004). Since 1999 she has been lecturing at the Charles University focusing on multiculturalism and minorities. More information about Laura can be found on her personal pages.

Contact details: laubeova(at)fsv.cuni.cz

PhDr Hana Synkova

Hana holds PhDr in Ethnology from the Institute of Ethnology at the Charles University, where she further pursues her PhD. She has researched the situation of Romani people in Eastern Slovakia and their migration to the Czech Republic. Currently she is concentrating on social work policies towards people from socially disadvantaged backgrounds. From 1999 she has been an editor of Cargo, Journal for Cultural/Social Anthropology.

Contact details: hana.synkova(at)login.cz

PhDr Martina Kalinova

Martina received her degree in West European Studies at the Faculty of Social Sciences (Charles University, Prague) in 2005. In 2004 she initiated and organised a colloquium “Minorities in the EU: Roma and Travellers, example of Great Britain”. She has authored several articles concerning Roma and Travellers (e.g. for Amaro Gendalos). Martina’s research interests include problems of ethnicity and nationalism, ethnic/national minority rights (mainly Roma, Jews and Travelling communities in Western Europe), and history - mainly Holocaust period. In 2003, Martina worked as  Project Manager for the INTER Project (A practical guide to implement Intercultural Education, http://inter.fsv.cuni.cz/index.htm).

Contact details: kalinovamart(at)seznam.cz

Kimberly Strozewski, PhD candidate

Kim graduated with a Dual M.A. in History and Slavic Area Studies from the Ohio State University in 2001. Her research focuses on the experience of Roma in the Protectorate of Bohemia during the Second World War. While completing coursework towards her Ph.D. in Central/East European History at the University of Michigan, Kim worked as an instructor for courses on the Holocaust and World War II as well as European History. She was the recipient of the Vaclav Havel Fellowship in Czech Studies in 2001, a FLAS Polish language fellow in 2000, and a FLAS Czech language fellow in 1997. She has lived and researched in Prague, Krakow, and Budapest and has volunteered at the Center for Romani Culture in Poland (Centrum Kultury Romow) and has worked as a research consultant for the European Roma Rights Center. She is now completing her Ph.D. at the Faculty of Humanities at Charles University on the Romani Holocaust and is the Resident and Academic Director of the CET Academic Programs (Jewish and Central European Studies).

Contact details: cetprague(at)fhs.cuni.cz

Marek Mikus

Marek is currently completing MA programs at the Institute of Ethnology, Faculty of  Philosophy and Arts and at the Institute of Sociology, Faculty of Social Sciences of Charles University in Prague. In 2004 he started to study the social exclusion of the Roma in Central Europe and did anthropological fieldwork in a locality in Central Slovakia. Gradually, his research focus has become the multilayered interface between academic discourse on the Roma, Romani ethnopolitics, identity/identities and institutional (both state and NGO sphere) settings which shape it. In summer of 2005, he worked as an intern in the Office of Plenipotentiary of the Slovak Government for Romani Communities. From autumn 2005, he acts as a media support for a section of the Czech NGO People in Need which provides social fieldwork services, mainly for socially excluded Roma.

Contact details: marek(at)mgzn.cz

Guest lecturers (summer 2005/2006)

Gabriela Hrabanova

Gabriela holds a BA in Sociology and Politics from the Anglo-American College in Prague and is currently involved in an online Romani Diplomacy course offered by the European Roma Information Office. She is the Executive Director of Athinganoi, an association of Romani high-school and university students based in Prague, a member of the Committee for the Decade of Romani Inclusion at the Czech Governmental Council for the Affairs of the Romani Community and a member of the Delegation of Romani NGOs to the Decade in the Czech Republic. Previously Gabriela worked on Romani projects of the Czech Ministry of Education and spent two years in Bulgaria working as a technology consultant (eRider) for Romani NGOs within the Romani Information Project in Sofia.

Mgr. Selma Muhic-Dizdarevic

Having gained her MA in Political Philosophy from the University of Belgrade, Selma worked for three years in the non-profit sector as an assistant for an international project on forced migration. She is now a PhD candidate at the Department of Public and Social Policy, Faculty of Social Sciences, concentrating her research on immigration policies and also works at the Public Sector Department, Faculty of Humanities, both at the Charles University.

PAST STAFF AND GUEST SPEAKERS

Lucie Cviklova, PhD candidate

Lucie holds M. A. in Sociology from the New School of Social Research and from the Central European University. She has taught courses in the field of social thought, political sociology and social theory at the Faculty of Humanities, Faculty of Social Sciences, New York State University, and Anglo-American College and was a junior fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna.  She has published on the issues of social and economic theory and philosophical and social theory of Juergen Habermas, Seyla Benhabib and others. Recently she has been affiliated with French Center of Social Sciences (CEFRES) in Prague and Narodohospodarsky ustav Josefa Hlavky. Lucie was one of the course lecturers during the summer 2004/2005 semester.

Guest lecturers (summer 2004/2005)

Professor Slawomir Kapralski

Educated at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Slawomir Kapralski has taught at the Centre for Social Studies in Warsaw and has been a visiting scholar at the University of Bielefeld (GFPS Fellow), at the University of Chicago (MacArthur Fellow) and at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna (Mellon Fellow). He is also a Recurrent Visiting Professor at the Central European University, Budapest. He has published extensively on the following topics: The Roma of Central and Eastern Europe; Nationalism, Ethnicity and Identity; Time, Space and Collective Memory; and Anti-Semitism and Polish-Jewish Relations. More information about Slawomir can be found here.

Mgr. Selma Muhic-Dizdarevic (see summer 2005/2006 above)

Assistant Professor Michal Vasecka

Michal Vasecka holds an M.A. (1995) and a Ph.D. (2004) in Sociology from Masaryk University in Brno. His career has taken him through the following posts: Employment at the Slovak Ministry of Culture (1991 – 1992), Researcher and Executive Director at the Documentation Center for the Research of Slovak Society (1991-1995), Researcher at the InfoRoma Foundation and Legal Advisor for the UNHCR Bratislava (1995-1996), Visiting Scholar at the New School for Social Research in New York (1996-1997), and Program Coordinator at the Open Society Foundation (1997-1998). Since 1999 he has worked at the Institute of Public Affairs as a Researcher and in January 2000 he became a Program Director. He currently concentrates on providing expert analysis of the Slovak transformation process with a focus on national minorities and the state of civil society. Since May 2000 he also acts as a consultant for the World Bank and externally lectures at a post-graduate Institute Academia Istropolitana Nova in Bratislava. Since September 2002 he serves as an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Social Studies of the Masaryk University. He is the author and co-author of several studies and research reports focused mainly on ethnic minority issues, media discourse and problems of civil society.

Professor Janos Ladanyi

Janos Ladanyi is a Professor at the Department of Sociology and Social Policy at the Corvinus University of Budapest. He has taught and held research positions at a number of universities in the United States of America (including Yale University and Univeristy of California),  in Austria and in Hungary (including a research fellowship at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences). Between 1990 and 1991 he acted as a Managing Director of the Raoul Wallenberg Human Rights Association. Besides poverty and ethnicity, his broader research interests are in comparative urban sociology, housing, social stratification, reforms and conflicts in former Soviet-type societies, post-communist transition, social policy and education.