Antonina Jeliazkova
The director of the International Center for Minority Studies and Intercultural Relations, Antonina Jeliazkova is a well respected figure in Bulgarian civil society. A historian and anthropologist specialising in Balkan Islam, she has spent three decades studying ethnic and religious minorities in Bulgaria and the Balkans.
The riots that rocked the village of Katounitsa and several cities across Bulgaria have not only marked a sudden upsurge in anti-Roma sentiment: an anthropologist argues that they are also a symptom of a sick society which has been unable to overcome the scourge of clientelism.