Professor Rayna Gavrilova holds an MA and Ph.D. in History from the University of Sofia "St. Kliment Ohridsky", Bulgaria and teaches in the Department of Cultural Studies, Faculty of Philosophy, at the same university. She has been a Fulbright fellow in Harvard University; a research fellow at the Annenberg Institute of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies in Philadelphia, PA; research fellow at Maison des Sciences de l’Homme in Paris; and visiting professor in Macalister College, Saint Paul, MN. Prof. Gavrilova teaches classes in Historical Anthropology of Southeastern Europe, Anthropology of Food and Eating, The City as a Way of Life. Her research interests are in the field of historical anthropology, historical anthropology of food and nutrition, history and anthropology of the city. In recent years she has published the bookя "The Family Scene: The Anthropological History of Family Eating in Bulgaria" and „Commensality. Reconstruction and interpretation of family nutrition in pre-/early modern Bulgaria”, as well as three articles on food: "Bulgarian for Dinner", "Alternative Heritage", and “The sweet smell a of the holiday: the holiday at the table”.
Selected publications
Gavrilova. Rayna. 2018. “Something Bulgarian for Dinner: Bulgarian Popular Cuisine as a Selling Point”, Informal Nationalism after Communism. The Everyday Construction of Post-Socialist Identities, ed. By Jeremy Morris, Emilia Pawłusz, Abel Polese and Oleksandra Seliverstova. I.B.Tauris & Co. Ltd: London, New York, 144-163.
Гаврилова, Райнa, "Колелото на живота" [The Circle of Life] (Sofia Universtiy St Kliment Ohridski Press, 1999).
Gavrilova, Rayna, Bulgarian Urban Culture in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (Susquehanna University Press, 1999).