Martin Fotta is the head of the Department of Mobility and Migration at the Institute of Ethnology, Czech Academy of Sciences. He obtained his PhD from Goldsmiths, University of London, in 2012. Before joining the Institute of Ethnology, he spent time as a postdoctoral researcher at Goethe University Frankfurt and as a lecturer at the University of Kent. His primary research interests include racialisation, diaspora, kinship, economic practices, mobilities, and welfare-state transformations. Fotta is the author of many scholarly articles as well as the book From itinerant trade to moneylending in the era of financial inclusion (Palgrave MacMillan, 2018), the first English-language monograph on Romanies in Brazil. He has edited several volumes and special issues within Romani-related scholarship, most recently collaborating with Paloma Gay y Blasco for Romani Chronicles of COVID-19: Testimonies of Harm and Resilience (Berghahn, 2023) and Ethnographic Methods in Gypsy, Roma and Traveller Research: Lessons from a Time of Crisis (Bristol University Press, 2024). 

In 2021, Fotta was awarded the prestigious Lumina Quaeruntur Award of the Academic Council of the Czech Academy of Sciences. Given to “support scientific excellence,” the award has enabled him to establish an ongoing research programme that explores the Romani diaspora from transcultural and transatlantic perspectives (https://www.romaniatlantic.cz).

Affiliation: Institute of Ethnology, Czech Academy of Sciences

Address: Na Florenci 3, 110 00 Prague, Czechia