Diana Ivanova (Bulgarian Диана Иванова; born 19 March 1968 in Montana, Bulgaria) is a Bulgarian journalist, author and documentary filmmaker. In her professional work she is interested in intercultural dialogue between people in Bulgaria and other countries, preferably Germany. As cultural manager and curator, she is committed to international understanding and cultural exchange and organizes every year in northwestern Bulgaria an international cultural festival. As a group analyst in Sofia and Bonn she deals with traumas that have been suffered due to the political situation in both countries in the time before the political change in Europe - in Germany primarily by citizens of the GDR.
Professional background
When Diana Ivanova went to school her birthplace still was wearing the name Mihajlovgrad. It was given up in 1993 in favor of the original name Montana. On the local German school, which maintained friendly relations with the Thuringian school in Schmalkalden as part of a twinning, she passed the Abitur. She lives and works in Bonn and Sofia.
Ivanova studied Cultural anthropology and Mass communication at the University of Sofia, where she 1991 obtained a Master in Journalism. After that she worked as a journalist until 1995, including as reporter and moderator at Bulgarian National Television. She then until 2003 was Radio journalist at Radio Free Europe in Prague. That same year she completed her training as a cultural manager on International Centre for Culture and Management (ICCM) at Prof. Herwig Poeschl in Salzburg. In 2005, she was Milena Jesenská scholarship holder at the Institute of Human Sciences. 2014 she completed her training as a group analyst at the International Association for Group Analysis (IAG) in Altaussee. Her dissertation focuses on the relationship between elderly Italians and Bulgarian women who had to leave their villages in regions with hopeless labor market situation to make money with the care of the elderly in Italy, but by that lost contact with their homeland. Since 2003 she is a freelance journalist, among others, for n-ost, Dnevnik, Capital (Bulgaria), Abitare and Foreign Policy. She is also manager of the New Culture Foundation and researched the film heritage of the Bulgarian secret services in Sofia, Berlin and Munich.
Work
Ivanova emphasizes “slow journalism”, as she calls it. Authenticity for her is essential. Journalism of this kind needs time and she is willing to take time. Against this background she is shaping her articles, her films and projects. Contentual focus of her work are the individual and collective traumas of the people in Bulgaria and Germany having been suffered by political circumstances. With her understanding of the trauma phrase she leans on the social psychologist Angela Kühner and the sociologist Kai Erikson, who understands a collective trauma as a “violation of the social tissue and the connections between people”. Cultural exchange and encounter groups are the chosen devices, by which she meets the traumas to prepare the ground for a better future. At the beginning of every project her look goes back to the past, which gives her information about the historical roots of the present and the actual experiences of the people. After her cycle Hello Melancholy was published in Capital weekly, she was awarded on 16 August 2005 by the Austria Press Agency in Vienna with the prize Writing for Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) – for her text Mrs. Bulgarian, Ivan Milev and Gustav Klimt. In December 2013 Ivanova was for the second time invited on a scholarship for one month in the Künstlerhaus Villa Waldberta in Feldafing. Among other things, she there showed the Films of the Bulgarian Ministry of State Security, which were presented in the Brotfabrik in Berlin too.
Projects (Choice)