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Michael Stewart is is Recurrent Visiting Professor in the Nationalism Studies Program at the Central European University in Budapest.
He is a Professor of Anthropology who has spent the past forty years thinking about the way Romany sociality offers a unique perspective both on European social life and on social theory. In his 1998 publication, The Time of the Gypsies, he reflected on how the romany speaking Rom in Hungary successfully refused to assimilate into the majority Hungarian population despite positive and negative feeback. A second book, Lilies of the Field (a volume co-edited with Sophie Day of Goldsmiths College and Akis Papataxiarchis of the University of the Aegean) focused on marginal people who live for the moment. 'Lilies' presente an ambitious theoretical comparison of peoples across the globe who share some of the Hungarian Rom's attitudes to time and history.
Alongside his written academic work Stewart worked in British television for a number of years and in 2011 he founded and directed the Open City Documentary Festival in London where he was responsible for the creation of a whole suite of media-based programmes that link social science research and artitistic media work.
Currently Professor. Stewart is working on a study of Romany historical memory in relation to the Holocaust. In academic year 2024-25 he is resident in Vienna, returning to complete this historical study drawing both on archive and scores of interviews conducted across Europe. In this work he is attempting to give back to the Sinti and Rom some of the experience of their ancestors as they were persecuted by the National Socialist state and its allies.
At CEU, along with Professor Maria Kovacs, he initiated and help establish the Roma Access Program. He also led a four year international Marie Curie consortium for the promotion of Anthropology of and in central and eastern europe, the graduates of which are employed across Europe in Anthropology departments. From 2000 until 2015 he directed the CEU Summer School on Romany Studies which trained a generation of doctoral students in multi-disciplinary approaches to their studies.
