Current Fellows

Magdalena Slavkova, PhD., is an Associate Professor of Ethnоlogy at the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Studies with Ethnographic Museum, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. Her research focuses on Roma communities, evangelical Christianity, labor mobility, intersections of faith and migration, evangelicalism in disaster contexts, educational integration of refugee children, return migration, and religious cultural heritage. She has conducted extensive ethnographic research in Bulgaria, particularly among various Roma communities who converted to evangelical Christianity during the 20th and 21st centuries, and abroad. This work led to the publication of her first monograph, Evangelical Gypsies in Bulgaria (in Bulgarian, 2007), and the co-authored volume Ethnicity, Religion and Migrations of Gypsies in Bulgaria (in Bulgarian, 2013). Her international research has extended to countries such as Spain, Portugal, and Greece. The second monograph of Slavkova, Busco trabajo. Work and social relations of Bulgarians in Spain (in Bulgarian, 2022), examines the job-seeking strategies and social integration of one of the largest Bulgarian migrant communities in Europe, analyzing patterns of mobility between Bulgaria and Spain. In 2025, her third monograph, Conversion, Leadership and Identity of the Evangelical Roma in Bulgaria was published by Brill & Schöningh Academic Publisher. The book is distinguished by its rich empirical data, use of archival materials and periodicals, rigorous scholarly approach, and sensitive engagement with Roma evangelical communities. She is also the co-editor of the open-access interdisciplinary collection Between the Worlds, published annually since 2019. Magdalena Slavkova is the author of more than 60 scholarly articles, published in Bulgarian and international journals and edited volumes.