David Z. Scheffel was a professor of anthropology at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada.[1]
Born in former Czechoslovakia in, he emigrated in August 1968 after the Soviet invasion with his parents and sister to Austria. Scheffel earned degrees in Canada in anthropology, culminating in his doctorate from McMaster University in 1988. His main areas of interest in the last couple of decades is ethnology studies of the Romani people in Europe. Scheffel is the author of numerous scholarly articles and books, including In the Shadow of Antichrist (Broadview Press, 1991), a work on the Russian Orthodox breakaway Old Believers sect in Alberta.
Scheffel's efforts to help impoverished Roma rebuild their community in the Slovakian village of Svinia is the subject of a 1998 documentary film, The Gypsies of Svinia.[2] He is also the author of the 2005 study Svinia in Black and White: Slovak Roma and their Neighbours (University of Toronto Press).
In June 2019, a Slovakian court in Prešov found Scheffel guilty of sexual abuse and illegal weapon possession and sentenced him to seven years in prison.[3] [4] The verdict remains under appeal.