Ms. Ioanida Costache

Professional Background

Ms. Ioanida Costache is PhD Candidate in Ethnomusicology at Stanford University (United States) and received her B.A. in Music from Amherst College (United States). Her current research explores issues of race and ethnicity, performance/construction of identity, cultural memory, trauma and history as they intersect in Romanian-Romani musico-oral traditions.

Costache’s research and teaching experience reflects extensive work in Romani and musical histories. Her writing has been published in several journals such as Critical Romani Studies, Bridge Magazine, Baricade and Decat o Revista. She is further the recipient of numerous research grants, including a Fulbright Research Grant (2013–2014), an ASEEES research grant (2017, wherein she also participated in the conference) and recently a Mellon-CES Dissertation Completion Fellowship among others. In 2020, Costache was also a visiting fellow at the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research.

Fellowship Research

Costache was awarded a 2019-2020 Yetta and Jacob Gelman Fellowship on the Holocaust in Romania at the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies for her research project, “Sounding Romani Sonic-Subjectivity: Counterhistory, Identity Formation, and Affect in Romanian-Roma Music, 1941-1989.” During her tenure at the Museum, Costache will conduct research on the Holocaust as it relates to the Romani people, oftentimes misrepresented as “forgotten” or “unknown” and which remains an unrecognized part of Holocaust history. Drawing on Museum resources, as well as fieldwork conducted in Romania, Costache’s research works to recover counter histories of Romani persecution during WWII in Romania, while asking questions about the politics of memory and epistemic inequality in the writing of historical narratives.       

Residency Period: May 1 through September 30, 2021