Marek Hojsik

Marek Hojsik leads an EU-wide EC-funded initiative Roma Civil Monitor 2021-2025 coordinated by the CEU in 26 EU member states. He has joined the CEU's Centre for Policy Studies in January 2018 to manage the previous Roma Civil Monitor pilot project 2017-2020, involving more than 100 civil society organisations from 27 EU member states, in which he previously worked as a thematic expert on governance and housing. 

He has worked in Roma inclusion policy in both non-governmental organisations and public administration since 2003. Before joining the CEU, he worked for the European Commission as an expert in social inclusion, desegregation and EU Funds (he co-authored the EU rules on the use of EU funds in fighting segregation), for the Czech Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs and for the Slovak government. From 2010 to 2012 he was Director-General of the Social Development Fund, a Slovak governmental agency for social inclusion and ESF implementation. Between 2008 and 2016 he participated in the Open Society Institute's programme aimed at supporting social inclusion initiatives on the local level “Making the Most EU Funds for Roma” in Slovakia and the Czech Republic. 

Marek has been engaged in applied public policy research. He participated in different research and evaluation tasks: for example, a study on Roma inclusion and implementation of the EEA/Norway Grants 2009-2014 (2016); evaluation of the implementation of the National Roma Integration Strategy 2014-2020 for the Slovak government (2014); evaluation of the integrated territorial program (“comprehensive approach”) aimed at Roma inclusion in Slovakia (2013). He took part in several transnational initiatives as a national expert: HomeLab - Integrated Housing and Labour Services in the Social Rental Enterprise Model (Metropolitan Research Institute, 2016); LERI - Local Engagement for Roma Inclusion (EU Fundamental Rights Agency, 2014-2016); Housing Policies in the European Union (Technische Universität Darmstadt and IWU Institute for Housing and Environment, 2019). Recently (2020), he assisted the governments of Slovakia and Albania in the development of their post-2020 Roma strategies and co-authored a report on fighting antigypsyism for the European Commission. Between 2020 and 2022 he managed a research project "New methods in data collection on discrimination against Roma in public services” coordinated by CEU and implemented in Bulgaria, Czechia and Hungary.

Marek has a MA degree in political science (Comenius University in Bratislava), a five-year-long training in psychotherapy (SUR Institute for Education in Psychotherapy, Prague), and currently is a PhD candidate in social geography (Charles University in Prague).