an Hancock: Professor of English, linguistics and Asian studies_University of Texas at Austin. The international Roma / Gypsy human rights film festival. NYC www.gypsyfilms.org Presenter: C. Daniel Dawson organizer and spokesperson-The Roma film festival Camera: Jason Coppola and Hilary Frink Producer: www.softnoisefilms.com Professor Ian Hancock (Romani: Yanko le Redžosko) is a linguist, Romani scholar, and political advocate. He was born and raised in England, and is one of the main contributors in the field of Romani studies. He is director of the Program of Romani Studies and the Romani Archives and Documentation Center at The University of Texas at Austin, where he has been a professor of English, linguistics and Asian studies since 1972. He has represented the Romani people at the United Nations and served as a member of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council under President Bill Clinton, who, according to Hancock, has Romani ancestry[1]. He also represented the Romani people at the 1997 Rafto Prize award ceremony. Professor Hancock has published more than 300 books and articles concerning the Romani people and language (particularly the Vlax dialect). These works analyze the Romani people not only through Romani linguistics but also through history, anthropology, and genetics. Professor Hancock is as well known in the field of linguistics -- particularly in the area of pidgin and creole languages -- as he is in the world of Romani studies and Romani social activism. In addition to his research on the Krio language of Sierra Leone, he has studied the Gullah language of coastal South Carolina and Georgia and the Afro-Seminole Creole language spoken by a community of Black Seminole descendants in Brackettville, Texas. Hancock was the first scholar to report the existence of Afro-Seminole Creole, and he later identified another variety of that language spoken in a village called Nacimiento in the Mexican state of Coahuila. He maintains that Afro-Seminole Creole and Gullah are closely related languages. www.radoc.net The Pariah Syndrome: An account of Gypsy slavery and persecution. http://www.geocities.com/~Patrin/pariah-contents.htm Less