Cătălina Tesăr

Cătălina Tesăr is a Romanian anthropologist and filmmaker whose work is rooted in long-term fieldwork among Roma communities. She earned her doctorate in anthropology with a thesis on arranged marriages, kinship, and gender relations among the Cortorari.

Her research blends ethnography and visual practice, often drawing on film, photography, and exhibition making to expand anthropological storytelling. She has co-directed award-winning documentaries, most notably “The Chalice. Of Sons and Daughters”, based on her immersive fieldwork. Fluent in the Romani language, she practices deep participatory observation, embedding herself in everyday and ritual life of the communities she studies.

Her research explores how tradition, material culture, and symbolic objects shape social bonds, inheritance, and identity. Through her work she challenges stereotypes, foregrounding voices from marginalized groups while rethinking how anthropology engages with lived experience.

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