Dr. Dezso Mate

Dezso Mate holds a PhD in Interdisciplinary Sociology from Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest. He is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the ERC-funded project EMPOWER: Empowering Legacy: Sites of Romani Genocide and Community Commemoration in East and East-Central Europe at the Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies (IOS) in Regensburg. He is also a research member of the DFG Research Unit Antiziganism and Ambivalence in Europe (1850–1950) at Europa-Universität Flensburg and a Visiting Research Fellow at the Research Centre on Antigypsyism at Heidelberg University.

He serves as Deputy Chair of the Barvalipe Academy at the European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture (ERIAC). He is an Editorial Board Member of Springer Nature’s Critical Perspectives on Romani Studies and an editor of the publication series Antiziganism and Ambivalence in Europe, published by EUF University Press in cooperation with wbg Academic at Verlag Herder. He also serves as Book Review Editor for Critical Romani Studies at the Central European University. Dezso Mate is an alumnus of the Kulturwissenschaftliches Institut (KWI) in Essen. Previously, he held research and teaching positions at Södertörn University in Stockholm, Central European University, the University of Sussex, and the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and at the T- Tudok Knowledge Management and Educational Research Inc., in Hungary. 

His research lies at the intersection of Critical Romani Studies, historical and academic antigypsyism, Romani intellectual history, genocide and memory studies, and postcolonial thought. His work examines the historical production of anti-Roma knowledge, Romani agency, resilience and intergenerational memory reparation. Dr. Mate’s 2026 open-access monograph, “Gypsy” Genesis: Reclaiming Romani Memories and Resilience, traces the intellectual histories and self-narratives of more than 150 Roma intellectuals across three generations in Hungary, examining the relationships between knowledge production, memory, recognition, and resilience.