Michael Stewart

Michael Stewart is is Recurrent Visiting Professor in the Nationalism Studies Program at the Central European University in Budapest.

He is a Senior Lecturer in Anthropology and Co-ordinator of the Centre for Democracy and Society. In his 1998 publication, The Time of the Gypsies, Dr. Stewart reflects on the survial of the gypsies through in Hungary and their refusal to assimilate into the majority population. A second book Lilies of the Field (a volume co-edited with Sophie Day of Goldsmiths College and Akis Papataxiarchis of the University of the Aegean) focuses on marginal people who live for the moment. Lilies presents an ambitious theoretical comparison of peoples across the globe who share some of the Gypsies’ attitudes to time and history.

Currently Dr. Stewart is working on a study of Romany historical memory in relation to the Holocaust. His other current projects include a scheme supported by the British Council in Romania encouraging the fledgling Romanian Farmers’ Association. As the project director of an ESRC Transnational Communities’ Programme he is also orchestrating research on languages of identity among the Hungarian diaspora in Romania, Serbia and Slovakia.

He is also a member of the HESP working group on educational needs of Romany students.