Cristina-Ioana Dragomir is an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Columbia University, Institute for the Study of Human Rights and a consultant with the United Nations. She previously served as an Assistant Professor of Political Science at SUNY Oswego, and was a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Advanced Study of India at University of Pennsylvania. Additionally, she was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy. She is the recipient of several awards and fellowships including the Ted Robinson Memorial Award, Bucerius Ph.D. Fellowship “Settling in Motion,” and The Global Network Grant from Open Society Institute.
Her work is in the field of social justice, human rights, subaltern studies, immigration and citizenship. She received her Ph.D. from the New School for Social Research in Politics (2014). Her dissertation, titled “Making the American Immigrant Soldier: Inclusion and Resistance,” examined the effectiveness of minority groups’ use of essentialist practices to challenge the existing political and social order and strive to achieve parity. Specifically, using political theory, ethnography, visual politics, social media, and historical analysis, her doctoral study analyzed the patterns of incorporation that immigrants use while enlisted in the U.S. military. Currently, using a transnational comparative framework, she examines how communities labeled as “Gypsies” mobilize against racial and ethnic discrimination in Europe and India.
Professor Dragomir has 10+ years of international research and teaching experience. She taught and led international programs and research projects in the U.S, India, Romania, Moldova and Poland, where she trained students, teachers and practitioners in conducting fieldwork. She presented her work in numerous international academic and public settings and she has been publishing her work in academic peer-review journals, newspapers and encyclopedias.
