On the Contributors
Volha Bartash
is a Researcher at the Department of History, University of Münster and the Graduate School for East and Southeast European Studies, University of Regensburg, Germany. Her research interests include the history and memory of the Nazi genocide of Roma in Eastern Europe. Volha has published her work in History & Memory, Journal of Baltic Studies, Romani Studies and other peer-reviewed journals. She has held fellowships at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies, Imre Kertesz Kolleg Jena, Uppsala University and Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies.
Tomasz Kamusella
is a Reader in Modern History at the University of St Andrews, Scotland, UK. He specializes in the interdisciplinary study of language politics and nationalism in modern Central Europe. Kamusella’s recent English-language publications include the monographs Politics and the Slavic Languages (2021), Eurasian Empires as Blueprints for Ethiopia: From Ethnolinguistic Nation-State to Multiethnic Federation (2021), Ethnic Cleansing During the Cold War: The Forgotten 1989 Expulsion of Turks from Communist Bulgaria (2018), and The Un-Polish Poland: 1989 and the Illusion of Regained Historical Continuity (2017). He also co-edited the following volumes: Languages and Nationalism Instead of Empires (2023), The Social and Political History of Southern Africa’s Languages (2018), and The Palgrave Handbook of Slavic Languages, Identities and Borders (2016). His latest work Words in Space and Time: A Historical Atlas of Language Politics in Modern Central Europe (2021) is also available online as an open access publication.
Emilia Kledzik
works at the Centre for Literary and Cultural Comparative Studies, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań. She is author of Perspektywa poety. Cyganologia Jerzego Ficowskiego (Poznań: Poznańskie Studia Polonistyczne, 2023). Emilia is editor-in-chief of the comparative literature journal, Porównania, and head of the postgraduate program, Roma. Knowledges and Institutional Practices, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań.
Hamish MacDonald
is a writer based in the Scottish Highlands. Recent poetry publications include Wilson’s Ornithology & Burds in Scots (Scotland Street Press 2020 and 2022) and contributions to a number of anthologies. He has held regional and national writers’ residencies including the first Robert Burns Writing Fellow for Dumfries and Galloway Arts Association (2003–06) and first Scots Scriever at the National Library of Scotland (2015–17).
Elena Marushiakova and Vesselin Popov
work at the Institute of Ethnology and Social Anthropology at the Slovak Academy of Sciences. From 2016 to 2023 they were based at St Andrews University (UK) as a Principal Investigator and a Senior Researcher of the ERC Advanced Grant, Roma Civic Emancipation Between the Two World Wars. Elena and Vesselin have been engaged in the field of Romani studies for more than four decades. Geographically, their research covers the Balkans, Central and Eastern Europe. Their main publications include the monographs Gypsies (Roma) in Bulgaria (1997), Gypsies in the Ottoman Empire (2000), Gypsies in Central Asia and the Caucasus (2016), the source book Roma Voices in History (2021) and the edited volume Roma Portraits in History (2022). They edited six volumes of Roma folklore and oral history, as well as multiple articles, book chapters, assessment studies and catalogues of museum exhibitions. Together with Sofiya Zahova, Elena and Vesselin are co-founders and co-editors of the Brill Series, Roma History and Culture.
Viktor Shapoval
works at Moscow City University. He recently contributed on Russia’s Roma to the following edited volumes: Roma Writings: Romani Literature and Press in Central, South-Eastern and Eastern Europe (2021), Roma portraits in history: Roma Civic Emancipation Elite in Central, South-Eastern and Eastern Europe (2022), and Romani Lexicography in the 19th Century (2022). In 2018, his North Russian Romani translation of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was published.
Mykhail Tyaglyy
is a Research Associate at the Ukrainian Center for Holocaust Studies and managing editor of the journal,
Sofiya Zahova
PhD, is a researcher at the Vigdís Finnbogadóttir Institute and director of the Vigdís International Centre, University of Iceland. Her publications discuss Romani literature and writing, Romani identity, ethnic groups and nation-building in Southeastern Europe. She published three monographs and co-edited four volumes and two special issues of Romani Studies. Her current research focuses on the history and ethnography of Roma in Iceland and minority languages in the Nordic countries.