Angéla Kóczé Assistant Professor of Romani Studies, Chair of Romani Studies Program, and Academic Director of the Roma Graduate Preparation Program at Central European University, Budapest. Previously, she was a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program at Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem (NC). She was the principal investigator of a research project (2013-16) on Institutionalization of Romani Politics After 1989 in Hungary, funded by the Hungarian Social Research Fund. Her research focuses on the intersections between gender, ethnicity and class as well as the social and legal inequalities faced by the Roma in various European counties. She has published several peer-reviewed academic articles and book chapters with various international presses including Palgrave Macmillan, Ashgate, and Central European University Press, as well as several thematic policy papers related to social inclusion, gender equality, social justice and civil society. She is a co-editor of The Romani Women’s Movement: Struggles and Debates in Central and Eastern Europe (Routledge, 2019, with Violetta Zentai, Jelena Jovanović and Enikő Vincze) https://www.routledge.com/The-Romani-Womens-Movement-Struggles-and-Debates-in-Central-and-Eastern/Kocze-Zentai-Jovanovic-Vincze/p/book/9781138485099 and The Roma and their Struggle for Identity in Contemporary Europe (Oxford: Berghahn, 2020, with Huub van Baar) https://www.berghahnbooks.com/title/KoczeRoma.
In 2013, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, in Washington D.C., honored Kóczé with the Ion Ratiu Democracy Award for her interdisciplinary research approach, which combines community engagement and policy making with in-depth participatory research on the situation of the Roma. Outside of her academic career, she has worked as a Senior Policy Adviser in the Hungarian Government (2004-2008), was a director of the human rights education program at the European Roma Rights Center (1998-2003), and was the founding director of the Romaversitas program in Budapest (1996-1997), which offers scholarships and mentorship to underprivileged students.