Team
Our team consists of research and didactic employees and PhD students of the Faculty of Arts and Educational Science of the University of Silesia in Katowice, as well as people with experience in expert and evaluation studies.
DIRECTOR
Prof. HRISTO KYUCHUKOV
DIRECTOR
University of Silesia in Katowice
e-mail: hristo.kyuchukov@us.edu.pl
Prof. Hristo Kyuchukov is an expert in the Roma and Turkic linguistics and intercultural education. For the last 30 years he has conducted research in Europe, the USA, India, Russia and Turkey. He has defended a PhD in general linguistics (specialisation: psycholinguistics) at the University of Amsterdam (1995), and a PhD in pedagogy (1998) in Bulgaria, where he also obtained a PhD in humanities in education theory and didactics.
He focuses his research interests on Romani and Turkic linguistics, bilingualism among children from national minorities, intercultural education among national minorities, migrants and refugees, as well as educational and linguistic rights of the Roma in Europe and in the world. Together with the American psycholinguist Jill de Villiers, PhD, he developed the world’s first psycholinguistic test in the Romani language.
He has published over 800 works in linguistics, human rights, intercultural education, history, culture and language of the Roma, migrants and refugees.
Prof. H. Kyuchukov is a famous author of children’s books. His book “My name was Hussein” received many awards, including the “Best Children’s Intercultural Book” in 2004. The book has been translated into Romani-German, Romani-Bulgarian, Romani-Romanian, Romani-Turkish and Romani-Arabic languages. Together with Ian Hanckockiem, PhD (USA) he is the co-author of the children’s book “A History of the Romani People”, published in 2005 in the United States.
For his scientific activities in linguistics and Roma education, he was awarded by the Ministry of Culture in Bulgaria (1998, 1999), the President and Ministry of Culture of Italy (2001), the Ministry of Culture and the Instituto de la Cultura Gitana of Spain (2015), the German organisation Amaro Foro, e.V, in Berlin (2018), Amico Rom festival in Lanciano, Italy (2019), and honoured for lifetime achievement by the Kali Sara Foundation and the Croatian Parliament in Zagreb (2020).
DEPUTY DIRECTOR
ŁUKASZ KWADRANS, PhD, Associate Professor
DEPUTY DIRECTOR
University of Silesia in Katowice
e-mail: lukasz.kwadrans@us.edu.pl
Intercultural and social rehabilitation educator, political scientist. He completed numerous research and teaching internships abroad as part of scholarships, incl. International Visegrad Fund, Erasmus, Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange as well as European Commission programmes and bilateral agreements. Participant, contractor and project coordinator of projects such as Participant, contractor and project coordinator of projects conducted by the National Science Centre, Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education, Polish Ministry of the Interior and Administration, European Commission, and International Visegrad Fund. Secretary of the Cultural Pedagogy and Intercultural Education Team at Committee of Pedagogical Sciences of the Polish Academy of Sciences. Member of Polish Association for the Support of Intercultural Education and Comparative Education Society in Europe, International Association for Intercultural Education, and Ukrainian Academy Of Acmeology. Since 2018, an external expert of the Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange, and since 2011, an expert of the Polish Ministry of the Interior and Administration during the evaluation of the government programme for the Roma community in Poland. Winner of team awards and an individual award of the Rector of the University of Silesia for teaching and research. A team member of The Foundation of Social Integration Prom, which received the Civi Europaeo Praemium award of the European Parliament in 2015. An expert with almost 20 years of experience in research on representatives of the Roma ethnic minority in Poland, he performed social evaluation studies for local government units, the Lower Silesian Voivode, the National Council of Probation Officers, and the Justice Institute. His research has been carried out as part of many grants and projects under the International Visegrad Fund programmes, the Human Capital Operational Programme, the European Social Fund, and InteRReg, and expert analyses and studies commissioned by local and government administration, as well as thanks to research internships and funds for statutory research. The result of his research is a series of publications on the situation of the Roma in Poland and Europe, with particular emphasis on education. As a member of the editorial board of the Romani Series, Lincom Academic Publisher, he carries out scientific and research work on the situation of the Roma in Central European countries in an international consortium, the result of which is a publishing series.
OTHER TEAM MEMBERS
Prof. WILLIAM NEW
ASSISTANT DIRECTOR
Beloit Colleague, Beloit, WI, USA
William New earned his B.A. from Dartmouth College (Hanover, NH), in History and English literature. He became a primary school teacher in the New York City area, and then transitioned to special education and clinical psychology. He worked as a teacher in a school for learning disabled and emotional disturbed children, as a counselor and evaluator in a juvenile detention center, and as a therapist in a child and adolescent psychiatry unit. He earned an M.A. in Reading, an M.Ed. in Neuroscience and Education, and a Ph.D. in Applied Educational and Developmental Psychology, all from Teacher’s College, Columbia University (NY, NY). His dissertation was a study of the effects of language knowledge and planning on writing ability.
After receiving his Ph.D., Dr. New became an assistant professor of Education at DePauw University (Greencastle, IN), and then an associate/full professor in Education and Youth Studies at Beloit College (Beloit, WI), where he taught for 25 years. During that time he also served several times as department chair, Director of Student Teaching, and Certifying Officer. Dr. New taught educational psychology, comparative education, history and philosophy of education, language arts and social studies methods, special education, and education and law. He also founded a charter school in Beloit, and served as it’s Board president for several years. In 2021, he retired from teaching and college service, and is currently Professor Emeritus at Beloit.
Over the past thirty years, Dr. New has conducted and published research in a several academic fields, as well as having received awards for creative writing. His career in Roma research began in 2001 with a study grant in the Czech Republic, to which he returned for a semester in 2002 during which he offered a travel-course on Roma issues to a group of American college students, during which they visited with Roma organizers in Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary. Dr. New was a senior Fulbright scholar in Athens, GR in 2003, during which time he conducted research with Roma children in an elementary school. His second Fulbright assignment was in Slovakia in 2010, where he taught a course on Roma issues to Slovak college students, and conducted research with Hristo Kyuchukov, who was teaching at the same university at this time. Over the past twenty years, Dr. New has conducted research in on Roma education and policy in several European countries, published widely, and spoken at many international conferences.
Besides his research on Roma issues, Dr. New has also conducted research on American minority education history and policy, focused mostly on Native American and African American issues. Additionally, he has been active in the field of comparative education and in the history of special education and psychiatry. Currently he is continuing his work on various Roma projects, working on an ethnographic biography of one of the founders of comparative education with a Greek colleague, and researching the history of autism in Russia and the United State. He is also writing a novel and renovating his old house.
SONIA STYRKACZ
VOLUNTEER
PhD student of the University of Silesia
Sonia Styrkacz is a psychologist, a pedagogist, and a PhD student at the Doctoral School of the University of Silesia and the University of Warsaw, Institute of Social Studies. Her research interests focus on the phenomena of cultural and identity appropriation as well as changes in the area of education of Roma students. She is a member of the Ian F. Hancock, Research, Documentation & Archive Center in Mersin (Turkey) – a research institute dealing with the Roma. She was a mobile researcher of Erasmus+ programme – she carried out qualitative research as part of the SCIEX project. She cooperated with the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) in the implementation of field research, and finished her work with the report “Równy dostęp do edukacji uczniów romskich na Śląsku” (“Equal access to education of the Roma students in Silesia”), as well as an article “Trudności w dostępie do edukacji uczniów romskich w dobie pandemii COVID-19” (“Difficulties in accessing education for Roma students during the COVID-19 pandemic”).
She has been dealing with educational issues for over 10 years. She coordinated the project “Świat Oczami Dzieci” (“The World Through Child’s Eyes”), supported by the Polish Centre for Civic Education (CEO). She implemented a project on psychological support for Roma children and youth from Ukraine (Polish Humanitarian Action, 2022). She was the Polish leader of the international youth project “Dikh he na Bister” devoted to the topic of the extermination of the Roma. She cooperates with numerous Polish and foreign organisations for the benefit of ethnic and national minorities.
She collaborates with the Centre for Research on Prejudice and the Centre of Migration Research. She is a careers and project adviser in the Poland-Roma-Ukraine Initiative, under the patronage of the Foundation Towards Dialogue.
COOPERATION
Thomas Acton, PhD, University of Greenwich, London, Great Britain
Prof. Ana Gimenez Adelantado, Universitat Jaume I, Castello de la Plana, Spain
Biser Alekov, PhD, Pablo de Olavide University, Sevilla, Spain
Marija Aleksandrovic, PhD, Preschool Teacher Training College “Mihailo Palov”, Vrsac, Serbia
Petre Breazu, PhD, Örebro University, Sweden
Colin Clark, PhD, University of the West of Scotland, Great Britain, Scotland
Jill de Villiers, PhD, Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts, USA
Emine Dingec, PhD, Kutahiya Dumlupinar University, Kutahya, Turkey
Encho Gerganov, PhD, New Bulgarian University, Sofia, Bulgaria
Barbara Grabowska, PhD, DLitt, Associate Professor, University of Silesia in Katowice
Margaret Greenfields, PhD, Buckinghamshire New University, Buckinghamshire, Great Britain
Ian Hancock, PhD, University of Texas, Austin, Texas, USA
Prof. Ewa Jarosz, University of Silesia in Katowice
Martin Kaleja, PhD, DLitt, Silesian University in Opava, Czechia
Georgia Kalpazidou, PhD, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece
Eleni Kiratji, PhD, University of Cyprus, Nicosia, Cyprus
Szilvia Lakatos, PhD, University of Pécs, Hungary
Alexandar Marinov, PhD, University of St. Andrews, St. Andrews, Scotland
Margareta Matache, PhD, Harvard T.C. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
Justina Matkowska, PhD, Central European University, Vienna, Austria
Elena Marushiakova, PhD, University of St. Andrews, St. Andrews, Scotland
Prof. Ewa Ogrodzka-Mazur, University of Silesia in Katowice
Cristian Padure, PhD, University of Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania
Chryso Pelekani, PhD, University of Cyprus, Nicosia, Cyprus
Tatiana Zachar Podolinska, PhD, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Bratislava, Slovakia
Veselin Popov, PhD, University of St. Andrews, St. Andrews, Scotland
Prasannanshu Prasannanshu, PhD, National Law University, New Delhi, India
Julieta Rotaru, PhD, Sodertorn University, Stockholm, Sweden
Milan Samko, PhD, Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra, Slovakia
Carol Silverman, PhD, University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon, USA
Punita Singh, PhD, Ashoka University, New Delhi, India
Anna Szafrańska, PhD, DLitt, Associate Professor, University of Silesia in Katowice
Hedina Tahirovoc-Siercic, PhD, University of Montenegro, Podgorica, Montenegro
Sofia Zahova, PhD, Reykjavik University, Iceland
Ajten Berlafa, Göteborg, Sweden
Jorge Bernal, Buenos Aires, Argentina
William Bila, Paris, France
Angelina Dimiter-Taikon, Stockholm, Sweden
Orhan Galjus, Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Martina Hornakova, Prague, Czechia
Jozek Horvat Muc, Murska Sobota, Slovenia
Santino Spinelli, PhD, Lanciano, Italy