Kocze wins award from Woodrow Wilson Center

Angela Kocze, a visiting assistant professor in sociology, will receive the 2013 Ion Ratiu Democracy Award from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

Kocze is a leading Hungarian Roma rights activist and scholar and is a research fellow at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

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Angela KoczeKocze was recently featured on the Washington Post blog, “She The People.”
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Kocze has an international reputation for interdisciplinary approach, combining political activism and policy-making with in-depth participatory research studies on the Roma situation in Hungary and elsewhere. Kocze also worked as a founding director of the European Roma Information Office (ERIO) in Brussels (2003-2004), as well as the former director of the human rights education program at the European Roma Rights Centre (1998-2003) in Budapest. Kocze was the founding director of the Romaversitas program (1996) in Budapest, which offers a scholarship and mentorship for underprivileged Roma minority university students.

Established in 2005, the Ion Ratiu Democracy Award (IRDA) aims to bring visibility and international recognition to the ideas, ideals and accomplishments of individuals around the world who are working on behalf of democracy. It brings recognition to the importance of the work carried out by democracy activists around the world. The event expresses the deep commitment to democracy of the late Ion Ratiu through his contributions as a Romanian politician as well as his interest in democratic change worldwide.

Kocze will be hosted in Washington, D.C., by the Wilson Center for up to one month to allow for broad and in-depth interaction with representatives of Washington’s policy, NGO and academic communities. She will present the results of her experience at a workshop at the Wilson Center on Dec. 5.

For more information, visit the IRDA website www.wilsoncenter.org/ratiu.

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