Oana Buta is an Associate Member at the Bamberg Graduate School of Social Sciences, researching on Roma political representation in Romania, namely on Roma nomination by mainstream political parties. Previously she was a project assistant at the European Centre for Minority Issues, Flensburg where she was involved in the development of the project Minority and Map Timeline in Europe and helped at the editing of several books dealing with minority rights. She holds a M.A/M.Sc. from University of Flensburg and Southern Denmark, as well a B.A from the University of Bucharest. Her research interests include: Roma, political representation, political parties, candidate selection, discrimination, critical race theory.