Leyla Safta-Zecheria is an anthropologist and a pedagogist. She holds a PhD in Political Science from Central European University Budapest. Apart from being a Research Affiliate with the Democracy Institute, she is also a Postdoctoral Research Assistant at the Department of Educational Sciences, West University of Timișoara, Romania. Her research interests include interpretive, participatory and critical approaches to the study of youth, disability and education, as well as related policies. In her current research, she uses qualitative, visual and participatory methods to understand the ways in which instances of social, economic and educational inequality are lived through and described by marginalized people, including people with experience of institutionalization, mental health problems, disability or parent migration.