Students | Romani Studies Program

Advanced Certificate in Romani Studies Program Students :

Students starting in 2022/2023 Academic Year:

Stelina Dungaj, Sociology and Social Anthropology, 2-years program (MA)

Stelina comes from Albania. She is an RGPP alumna. Stelina believes that the Advanced Certificate in Romani Studies is a great opportunity for all Roma and non-Roma students. It provides a great picture of the situation of the minority.

It also prepares students to critically consider and analyze all the policies and strategies that are implemented with regard to their life improvement in many dimensions and find out what is the most sufficient way to think and write about Roma.

Yulia Abibok, Comparative History

Yulia Abibok is from Ukraine. Yulia holds an MA in Journalism and studies Comparative History in the 1-year masters program.She is a junior research fellow at the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies when she is working on a microhistorical project about interethnic relations and mass massacres in Eastern Galicia. She is also pursuing a research project about Nazi policies towards Roma and Yenish (Jenisch) people.

Sevdjulje Ramadani, Sociology and Social Anthropology (MA)

Sevdjulje comes from Serbia, and she is an RGPP alumna. She is interested in the marginal urban neighborhoods inhabited mostly by the Roma population. In her MA thesis she is exploring how informal practices are reproduced and maintained in such spaces. She is specifically interested in social reproduction activities and housing issues. She hopes that her work can contribute to better understanding of the relations between space, ethnicity, race and gender.

Eliza Tovizi, Human Rights (MA), Legal Studies

Eliza is from Hungary. Eliza is pursuing her MA the one-year Human Rights program. Her research interest focuses on educational segregation of Roma pupils. She intends to describe the case of Roma in Hungary with regards to the effectiness of anti-discrimination policies and international human rights laws, and explore effective inclusion policies and mechanisms for protecting minority rights. Eliza started pursuing her Advanced Certificate in Romani Studies in September, 2022.

Evelyn Oldham, GEMMA, Gender Studies

Evelyn is currently in her second year of MA studies. Evelyn comes from Florida, U.S., where she earned her BA in Women's Studies, International Studies, and Spanish at the University of Florida.

Her MA thesis will be focused on U.S. children's films' representations of Romani women, and how they inform and are informed by social stereotypes, with a particular focus on Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Evelyn started pursuing her Advanced Certificate in Romani Studies in September, 2022.

Sneha Sandez, Critical Gender Studies

Sneha is from India. She is currently finishing pursuing her graduate studies in Critical Gender Studies. Her primary focus of research is on domestic violence (DV) in marginalized and racialized communities, specifically Roma women in Hungary and Dalit women in India. Sneha holds a Liberal Arts BA in Asian Studies. She is passionate about working on topics related to Gender-based violence (GBV) and minority rights. In her future, she hopes to work in policy development and teaching, making an impact at both individual and macro-level on how women and non-binary people from South Asian regions and other racialized communities are affected by violence-related development discourses.

Serdjan Baftijari, MPA, Department of Public Policy

Serdjan comes from Montenegro. He graduated from the faculty of Political Science where he earned his bachelor’s degree in international relations and diplomacy in 2020. In 2021, he graduated from RGPP. Afterwards, He was admitted to Public Administration (2-year program) at the Department of Public Policy. As an Advance Certificate in Romani Studies student, his focus is on exploring antigypsyism and the ways of how to combat it in education and media representation.

Rosa Hergan, MA, Social Anthropology and Sociology (1-year program)

Rosa comes from Graz, Austria, where she earned a BA in English and American studies and a MA in Global Studies focusing on law and politics in southeastern Europe at the University of Graz. Her MA thesis focuses on differential access to water infrastructures and collective action against small hydropower development in southeastern Kosovo. She explores how a socio-material assemblages framework for studying water infrastructure and citizenship practices can be applied to research infrastructural disconnection of Roma in Europe. Rosa started pursuing her Advanced Certificate in Romani Studies in September 2022.

Students starting in 2021/2022 Academic Year:

Blanka Szilasi, Nationalism Studies (MA), Nationalism Studies Program

Blanka comes from Hungary. She is interested in how prejudice towards Roma is created and maintained in society. She focuses on the representation of Roma in far-right, mainstream, and left-wing media. She aims to develop effective practices to decrease stereotypical rhetoric and prejudice towards Roma. Previously, she worked as a social worker and project coordinator with Roma in Hungary. Blanka's expected date of graduation is 2023.

Maria Atanasova, Political Science (MA), Political Science

Maria is in her first year of her Political Science MA program. She is interested in identity politics, populism, and voting behavior. Maria comes from Bulgaria. In the previous academic year she was an RGPP student and graduated in 2022 from RGPP. Maria's expected date of graduation is 2023.

Lavinia Laluna Lucie Seidel, Nationalism Studies (MA), Nationalism

Lavinia comes from Romania. Laviania is interested in the intersections of nationalism, identity, racism and other forms of discrimination, for example, sexism. She wants to find and improve ways to make a change accesible for everyone. Since 2021, she studies at Nationalism Studies department and is working with Roma feminist organisations Vivaro (based in Vienna) and Romaniphen (based in Romania).

Lavinia' expected date of graduation is 2023.

Gopalas Michailovskis, Cultural Heritage Studies Program (MA), Medieval Studies

Gopalas is an RGPP alumni and she comes from Lithuania. His expected date of graduation is 2023.