Margareta (Magda) Matache

Dr. Margareta (Magda) Matache is a Lecturer on Social and Behavioral Sciences at the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and the Director of the Roma Program at the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights, Harvard University.

Her research focuses on systems of oppression, with a focus on anti-Roma racism.

With more than 20 years of experience in activism and research, Dr. Matache has dedicated her work to advancing justice and Roma rights. From 2005 to 2012, Dr. Matache was the Executive Director of Romani CRISS, a human rights organization that defends the rights of Roma people. In 2012, she was awarded a Hauser postdoctoral fellowship at the FXB Center, where she co-founded, along with Professor Jacqueline Bhabha, 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 structural determinants of health to the rights and agency of Romani children and adolescents, early childhood development, anti-Roma racism, reparations, segregation in education, and participatory action research.

She received 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.