International Interdisciplinary Seminar Series in Romani Studies

Anotation and bio

In the introduction to their talk, Elena Marushiakova and Veselin Popov will present an overview of the Brill Series Roma History and Culture, outlining its history of establishment, guiding principles, and the volumes already published, as well as those currently in preparation. In the central part of the presentation, E. Marushiakova and V. Popov will provide a detailed overview of their recent book, Stalin vs. Gypsies: Roma and Political Repressions in the USSR (2024). They will analyse the book’s central idea, the motivation behind its writing, and the aims and significance of the monograph. It will also address the book’s key arguments, primary sources, methodological approaches, and its contribution to wider scholarship on state repression, minority policies, memory studies, and Roma studies in the Soviet context.

Professors Elena Marushiakova and Veselin Popov work at the Institute of Ethnology and Social Anthropology at the Slovak Academy of Sciences. Previously, they worked at the University of St Andrews (UK) as Principal Investigator and Senior Researcher on the ERC Advanced Grant “Roma Civic Emancipation Between the Two World Wars”. Active in Romani Studies for over four decades, they have published extensively on Roma in the Balkans and Central and Eastern Europe. Their major publications include Gypsies (Roma) in Bulgaria (1997), the pioneering monograph on Roma history and ethnography in Bulgaria; Gypsies in the Ottoman Empire: A Contribution to the History of the Balkans (2001); Gypsies in Central Asia and the Caucasus (2016); Roma Voices in History: A Sourcebook (2021); Roma Portraits in History (2022); and Stalin vs Gypsies: Roma and Political Repressions in the USSR (2024). Marushiakova and Popov have also edited six volumes on Roma folklore and oral history and authored numerous other scholarly works. Together with Dr. Sofiya Zahova, they co-founded and co-edit the Brill Series “Roma History and Culture.”