Margareta Matache is a scholar and Roma rights activist from Romania, director of the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights’ Roma Program, and a Harvard instructor. Her research and teaching focus on the history and manifestations of anti-Roma racism, as well as the global history of race and racism.
From 2005 to 2012, Dr. Matache was the Executive Director of Romani CRISS, a human rights organization that defends the rights of Roma. In 2012, she was awarded a Hauser postdoctoral fellowship at the FXB Center, where she founded the University’s Roma Program.
In 2017, with Jacqueline Bhabha and Andrzej Mirga, she co-edited Realizing Roma Rights, an investigation of anti-Roma racism in Europe. Also, along with Jacqueline Bhabha and Caroline Elkins, Dr. Matache is the co-editor of Time for Reparations, a 2021 volume exploring the issue of reparations across a broad range of historical and geographic contexts and academic disciplines. Her other publications and research have ranged from the rights and agency of Romani children and adolescents to early childhood development, anti-Roma racism, reparations, segregation in education, and participatory action research.
She completed her Master’s in Public Administration from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and her doctoral degree in Political Sciences from the Faculty of Political Sciences at the University of Bucharest. She also holds a master’s degree in European Social Policies.
