Assoc. Prof. Mila Maeva, PhD – Project Leader
Mila Maeva, PhD, is an Associate Professor at Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Studies with Ethnographic Museum, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. She graduated Ethnology from Sofia University ‘St. Kliment Ohridski’ (2002). M. Maeva obtained PhD in Ethnography from Ethnographic Institute and Museum, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (2005). She is the author of two books – “Bulgarian Immigrants in Turkey in Turkey (Culture and Identity)” (2006) and “Bulgarian Emigrants in England – Past and Present” (2017). She specialised in the Ege University, Turkey (2003), in the University of Warwick (2007), in the University of Manchester (2010-2011), United Kingdom, and Pittsburgh University, USA (2009). Her research interests are focused on migration, mobility, ethnic communities, disasters and religious transformations. E-mail: mila.maeva@iefem.bas.bg
Assist. Prof. Mina Hristova, PhD – Project Coodinator
Mina Hristova, PhD, is a researcher at the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Studies with Ethnographic Museum at the Bulgarian Academy of Science with a dissertation defended on June 2nd 2020. It is on the anthropological dimensions of borders and identity construction (at the tripoint border between Serbia, Bulgaria and Macedonia). She also has a second dissertation at the University of Graz, where she works on urban space and its role in the division of ethnic societies in Macedonia. In 2017 she was awarded the ‘Academician Ivan Evstratiev Geshov’ award for youngest scientist of BAS. She is currently a researcher at IEFSEM-BAS at the ‘Balkan Ethnology’ Department. Her research interests include anthropology of borders, urban anthropology, identities, memory, migrations and nationalism. Some of her recent research on the border identities and heterotopies is available in Max Plank’s ‘New Diversities’ Journal. A short anthropological essay on some of the political, social and cultural dimensions of the COVID-19 crisis in Bulgaria is published in EASA’s Social Anthropology/Anthropologie Sociale, COVID-19 Urgent Anthropological forum.
E-mail: hristova.mina90@gmail.com; mina.hristova@iefem.bas.bg
Assist. Prof. Yelis Erolova, PhD
Yelis Erolova, PhD, is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Studies with Ethnographic Museum, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Balkan Ethnology Department. Her research interests are focused on ethnicity and religion, cultural heritage, migration processes among different communities in Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey. She is the author of a number of scholarly publications, some of which are: ‘Dobrudzha. Borders and identities’ (in Bulgarian, 2010); ‘Ethnicity, religion and migrations of the Gypsies in Bulgaria’ (in Bulgarian, with M. Slavkova, 2013). E-mail: yelis.erolova@iefem.bas.bg
Assist. Prof. Magdalena Slavkova, PhD
Magdalena Slavkova, PhD, is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Studies with Ethnographic Museum, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. Her research interests are related with Roma/Gypsies, Evangelicalism, Pentecostalism, social ties at work, labour mobility, migration. She is an author of more than 50 scholarly articles and several books: ‘Evangelical Gypsies in Bulgaria‘ (in Bulgarian, 2007); ‘Ethnicity, religion and migrations of the Gypsies in Bulgaria‘ (in Bulgarian, with Yelis Erolova, 2013); ‘Between the worlds: people, spaces and rituals’ (with Mila Maeva, Yelis Erolova and Rachko Popov, 2019). Academia.edu: Magdalena Slavkova. E-mail: magdalenaslavkova@yahoo.com
Assist. Prof. Plamena Stoyanova, PhD
Plamena Stoyanova, PhD, is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Studies with Ethnographic Museum, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and lecturer at the Sofia University, Faculty of History. Her research interests are related with Policies towards minorities in Bulgaria, Roma/Gypsies today, Education, volunteering and migration. She is an author of more than 25 scholarly articles and the book: ‘Policies towards Gypsies during the Socialism’ (2017). E-mail: plamena.stoyanova@iefem.bas.bg
Behrin Shopova, PhD
Behrin Shopova, PhD, is a Researcher, with МА in Music Pedagogy from Plovdiv Academy of Music, Dance and Fine Arts in 2006. In 2018 she obtained PhD in Musicology, Music and Dance Arts at the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Studies with Ethnographic Museum, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. She explores the local functioning of the traditional music and folklore culture of Sunni Turks in Bulgaria – the contemporary processes of folk culture transformation. In addition to ethnomusicology, her studies are related to other interdisciplinary cognitive fields, such as ethnology, cultural anthropology, theology, etc. Currently, Behrin Shopova’s research work focuses on Muslim communities, their religious and traditional rituals. E-mail: behrin.shopova@iefem.bas.bg
Julia Popcheva is a PhD student at Balkan Ethnology department, part of the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Studies with Ethnographic Museum at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. Her interests in ethnology, dancing folklore studies and migration studies are combined in a PhD thesis focused upon Bulgarian micro communities as modern social and cultural phenomena both in the country and abroad. She has specialized in universities in Spain and France, where she has conducted part of her field work research. Julia works also in the field of urban ethnology. Her paper “The Meeting Point of Bulgarian Emigrants” is published in the latest edition of Bulgarian Ethnology magazine. She is one of the authors in the “Ethnology and Epidemics” – a series of articles published on the Facebook page of the institute.
E-mail: popcheva.julia@gmail.com