The People

Răzvan Anton, art photographer and printmaker
Răzvan Anton holds a BA in printmaking from the University of Art and Design Cluj, Romania and an MA in drawing from the University of the Arts, London, UK. He is a visual artist and teacher at the Cluj University of Art and Design and from 2016-2019 is the artist-in-residence at the Mediaș Synagogue and Archives in the EU Horizons 2020 TRACES project.

Chris Bentley, web developer and technical consultant
Chris Bentley holds an M.S. in Library and Information Science from Pratt Institute. He has worked at the Leo Baeck Institute as an archivist and web developer since 2008.

David Borchin, researcher in Timişoara
David Borchin is completing a bachelor’s degree in history at West University of Timişoara. He speaks fluent English and Romanian and reads in German. His BA thesis explores the antisemitic policies in the Romanian Banat region from 1938-1944.

Julie Dawson, project director and researcher
Julie Dawson has been an archivist at the Leo Baeck Institute since 2010, prior to which she worked in Romania and Germany for nine years. She holds an MA in Jewish Studies and a Certificate in East Central European Studies from Columbia University and is a doctoral candidate at the Institute for Contemporary History at the University of Vienna. She speaks German, Romanian, Yiddish, and reads basic Hungarian and Hebrew. If you have questions or comments about this project, you may contact her at jbat [at] lbi.org.

Iulia Teodora Florea, researcher in Brașov and project translator
Iulia Florea has a bachelor’s degree in Philology (Russian - French) from the University of Bucharest and a master’s degree in translation and interpreting (French-Romanian) from the University of Transylvania, Braşov. She has been working as a guide and a translator for the last six years and is passionate about history and exploring different cultures. In the JBAT project she has done archival survey in the Braşov archives and general translation work. She is fluent in German, English, French and Romanian.

Márton László, researcher in Târgu Mureș
Márton László has been employed as an archivist at the Mureș branch of the National Archives of Romania in Târgu Mureş since 2007. He studied at Babeş-Bolyai University of Cluj from 1997-2001, obtaining a masters in history from the department of History and Philosophy in 2002. From 2004-2007 he was enrolled as a doctoral student in history at Pázmány Péter Catholic University in Budapest, Hungary. He has edited and published articles in numerous publications in Romanian and Hungarian related to regional history, especially concerning the Hungarian minority. He also coauthored the chapter on the Hungarian national minority in the Report of the Presidential Commission for the Study of the Communist Dictatorship in Romania (Raport Final-Comisia Prezidenţială pentru Analiza Dictaturii Comuniste din România), Vladimir Tismăneanu, Dorin Dobrincu, Cristian Vasile (ed.), Humanitas, Bucureşti, 2008, pp. 332-351.

Timothy Ryan Mendenhall, researcher in Suceava and Sibiu
Timothy Ryan Mendenhall received a B.A. in Germanic Languages and Literatures from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2004, and his M.L.I.S. with a concentration in Archives at Queens College at the City University of New York in 2010. In addition to his work on the first phase of the JBAT project, he has worked as a librarian and processing archivist at the Leo Baeck Institute (New York), the Center for Jewish History, and the Frick Art Reference Library. He currently works as Metadata Librarian at Fordham University and as a freelance translator.

Tímea-Imola Molnár, researcher in Timișoara and project translator (Hungarian)
Tímea-Imola Molnár has a bachelor’s degree in Applied Computer Science and Applied Linguistics (English-German specialization) from the West University of Timișoara. She is currently an MA student of “German in the European Context”, an interdisciplinary and multicultural studies specialization at the same university. She works as a Hungarian translator. She speaks Hungarian, Romanian, English and German fluently and Italian at a beginner level.

Orsolya Nagyi, researcher in Cluj and project translator (Hungarian)
Orsolya Nagyi graduated from the department of Political, Administrative and Communication Sciences with a specialization in Journalism from the Babeș-Bolyai University of Cluj. She also completed a Master’s in Social-Cultural Communications. Her research looks at the Jewish situation in northern Transylvania as reflected in the Hungarian press from 1940-1944, specifically the methods in which antisemitic measures were described by the press during the war period. She is a grant recipient of the J. & O. Winter Fund from the Rosenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies from City University of New York. In addition to her research, Nagyi works in the offices of the president of the Cluj Jewish Community.

Anda Reuben, researcher in Mediaș and project translator
Anda Reuben holds a BA in Philosophy and Journalism from "Spiru Haret" University in Bucharest and a Master's in Informal Jewish Education from the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York; she has also completed training in graphic design. As an English translator, she has worked in the media, literature and various other projects, such as JBAT. She speaks Romanian and English fluently, French, Hebrew and a basic level of German. From 2014 - spring 2017 Ms. Reuben worked as project manager at the synagogue in Mediaș.

Alexandra Toma, archival processing assistant and translator
Alexandra Toma graduated from the Babes-Bolyai University, specialization in Economics. She speaks Romanian and English fluently and German on an intermediate level. Alexandra Toma has been involved with activities at the Medias synagogue since 2014, first as a volunteer, then as the project manager assistant and currently as project manager for activities and events in the space. She is involved in many local initiatives to revitalize and sustain regional heritage.

Csongor Vass, researcher in Alba Iulia
Csongor Vass studied at Babeș-Bolyai University of Cluj Napoca, specializing in Didactic Roman-Catholic Theology and Hungarian language and literature. He also took courses in library science, literature translation and related fields. In addition to his native language of Hungarian, he also speaks Romanian and German as well as French, English and Italian at a lower level. He has been the archivist at the Romanian-Catholic Archdiocese of Alba Iulia since 2014.

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