Politics of Roma Inclusion/Exclusion Workshop

Event details

This event will be held both online on Thursday 25 November 2021.

Please note that all attendees are required to register before attending the event and you will will receiving a joining link and instructions closer to the start of the event. 

Workshop schedule

Time		Speakers
1:30pm - 3pm	Research Panel: Politics of Roma/Inclusion/Exclusion	Welcome: Prof. Aidan McGarry (Institute for International Governance)   Rafael Buhigas Jiménez (UCM, Madrid) Roma and housing question between Franco's dictatorship and the Transition (1959-1986). Approach, concepts and problems in the research Dr. Petre Breazu (Institute for International Governance)), Prof. Aidan McGarry Romaphobia in an Age of Populism: Media Discourse in UK and Sweden   Dr. Maria Bogdan (CEU, Vienna) The media representation of Roma in Hungary (The Visible Stranger) Chair: Prof. Aidan McGarry
3pm - 3:30pm	Break
3:30pm - 5pm	Roundtable: Roma Diplomacy and Voice in International Politics	Dr. Magda Matache (Harvard University) Zeljko Jovanovic (Open Society Foundations, Berlin) Dr. Ismael Cortés (Member of Parliament, Spain) Dr. Laura Cashman (Canterbury Christchurch University, UK) Gabriela Hrabanova (ERGO, Brussels) Mihai Bica (Roma Support Group, London) Chair: Prof. Colin Clark (UWS, Glasgow)

 

Workshop Speakers

Mihai Bica

Mihai Calin Bica is a member of the Roma community, originally from Romania. Mihai is a qualified social worker and most of his professional experience is related to working with the Roma communities. His work includes supporting young Roma accessing higher education and the employment market, discrimination in the housing area, representation and empowerment and migration to the UK. Mihai works for the Roma Support Group since 2016 where he is currently is carrying policy and campaigning work. Mihai is leading RSG’s policy work in the Brexit area as well as facilitating EUSS support for Roma community members.

Maria Bogdan

Dr. Maria Bogdan is a social scientist and a media theorist. Her main research interest is related to media representation and racism. Over the past few years her research has been focusing on social media and social movements, in particularly on the Roma movements. She received her PhD from the Film, Media and Culture Theory Doctoral Program of the Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest. She is involved as scholar with the work of the Romani Studies Program of Central European University. Earlier she was a post-doctoral research fellow at the Antigypsyism Research Center of Heidelberg University.

Petre Breazu

Dr. Petre Breazu is a MSCA Postdoctoral Fellow at Loughborough University, London. Petre’s research lies in the area of discourse and racism, with special focus on the representation of the Roma in European media and political discourse. He works under the framework of Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis (MCDA) to examine practices of discrimination and social exclusion with regards to Roma and other marginalised communities. Petre's previous research has been published in international peer-reviewed journals, such as Discourse and Communication, Discourse and Society, Ethnicities, Language in Society and Social Identities.

Rafael Buhigas Jiménez

Research staff in training at Universidad Complutense (Spain). He is doing a PhD on the history of Roma people in Madrid (1959-1986). History degree and Interuniversity Master's Degree in Contemporary History from that same center. In addition, he has a specialist title in "Jews of Islam" by the CSIC. His main research attends to the changes in the living conditions and in the forms of cultural identity of the Roma community in contemporary Madrid. During his training at the Faculty of Geography and History, he was a scholarship assistant in the Department of Modern History and Contemporary History as an assistant editor of the Cuadernos de Historia Contemporánea. He has been part of scientific committees, organization of seminars and teaching innovation projects. He has participated as a speaker and coordinator of workshops in more than a dozen national and international congresses. He has published several articles on social history and urban history on Roma in the 19th century and the first third of the 20th. Between February and May 2020 he has developed a research stay within the "Group of Roma Studies" attached to the Universidad Nacional de San Martín (Argentine) on the relationship between Argentine roma and the urban development of Buenos Aires, thanks to one of the six prestigious “Ibero-American Research Grants”. More info here & here.

Laura Cashman

Dr Laura Cashman is Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at Canterbury Christ Church University. Her PhD (University of Glasgow) examined the implementation of Romani integration policies in the Czech Republic and her research continues to focus on racist discrimination against Romani communities across the EU. She has published articles and book chapters examining specific challenges in education and employment policies in local contexts focusing on the segregation of Romani children in so-called ‘special’ schools. Her research agenda has now broadened to look at wider concerns of the growth of anti-Gypsyism in Europe to understand the persistent failure of state policies to address the social exclusion of Roma at all levels of society. She regularly peer reviews for academic journals and also has experience as a consultant for EU reports, and as a commentator in the UK media. Her expertise has also been called upon as an independent expert in court cases related to asylum claims.

Colin Clark

Colin Clark is an applied social scientist based in Glasgow, Scotland. He currently works as a Professor of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of the West of Scotland (UWS). Outside of UWS, he is a director of the Coalition for Racial Equality and Rights and a trustee of Romano Lav. Colin also acts as research advisor to The Traveller Movement, the Scottish Human Rights Commission and the Advisory Council for the Education of Romanies and other Travellers. He is currently co-editor of the journal Romani Studies and has published widely on issues of identity, migration, citizenship and Roma rights. On Twitter he is: @profcolinclark

Ismael Cortés

Ismael Cortés holds a PhD in International Studies of Peace, Conflicts and Development by the UNESCO Chair of Philosophy for Peace (Universitat Jaume I). He has been a researcher at the University of Nottingham, the International University of Andalusia and the Carlos III University. He has been an expert consultant in the OSCE - ODIHR project "Turning words into action. Combating anti-Semitism and other forms of intolerance (2015-2018)". He has worked as a policy analyst for think tanks such as the Center for European Policy Studies and the Open Society European Policy Institute. He was a postdoc felow of the Roma Studies Program at Central European University. He coordinated the book Dimensions of Antigypsyism in Europe. This year he published the book, Dreams and shadows on the Gitanos. The presence of an historical racism. Currently he serves as an MP in the Spanish Parliament.

Gabriela Hrabanova

Jamen Gabriela Hrabanova is a human rights activist with extensive experience in the protection, promotion, and advocacy of Roma rights. She has joined ERGO Network in 2011, where currently serves as a Director. For many years, she was working in the civil society sector, engaged as a technology consultant for non-profit organizations, and as a leader of Roma student association Athinganoi. Later she was employed by the Governmental Office as a Director of the Roma Office for the Council for Roma Minority Affairs in the Czech Republic where she was coordinating strategic and conceptual works related to Roma integration. She was highly involved in the Czech Presidency of the European Union when the EU accepted the 10 Common Basic Principles for Roma Inclusion and organized the first meeting of the EU Roma Platform. She is one of the initiators of the Alliance Against Antigypsyism. She is a member of the board member of RomMedia Foundation and until June 2017 she was a member of the Advisory Panel to the director of the Fundamental Rights Agency.

Zeljko Jovanovic

Zeljko Jovanovic is Director of the Open Society Roma Initiatives Office. The office supports Roma in making their voices heard and power felt in policymaking. Besides his work with Open Society Foundations, Jovanovic is a board chair of the European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture and also a member of the European Council on Foreign Relations and the ASPEN Institute. Before joining the Open Society Foundations in 2006, Jovanovic worked for the OSCE. He also led a grassroots Roma organization, a community radio, civic and political campaigns and mentored and trained managers, advocates and leaders. Jovanovic graduated in law at the University of Belgrade and in governance at University of Oxford. Jovanovic comes from a family or Roma ethnic background that through a belief in hard world, self-determination and education, moved from multi-generational extreme poverty to the middle class in Serbia.

Magda Matache

Dr. Margareta (Magda) Matache is a scholar from Romania, director of the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights’ Roma Program, and a Harvard instructor. Her research and teaching focus on the history and manifestations of anti-Roma racism, as well as the global history of race and racism.In 2017, with Jacqueline Bhabha and Andrzej Mirga, she co-edited Realizing Roma Rights, an investigation of anti-Roma racism in Europe. Also, along with Jacqueline Bhabha and Caroline Elkins, Dr. Matache is the co-editor of Time for Reparations, a volume exploring the issue of reparations across a broad range of historical and geographic contexts and academic disciplines. She completed her Master’s in Public Administration from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and her doctoral degree in Political Sciences from the Faculty of Political Sciences at the University of Bucharest. She also holds a master’s degree in European Social Policies.

Aidan McGarry

Aidan McGarry is a Professor of International Politics at the Institute for Diplomacy and International Governance at Loughborough University, London. His research focuses on social movements, protest, political voice, and marginalised communities especially Roma but also LGBTIQ communities. He is the author of five books including Who Speaks for Roma? (Continuum, 2010), Romaphobia: The Last Acceptable Racism in Europe (Zed, 2017), and The Aesthetics of Global Protest: Visual Culture and Communication (Amsterdam University Press, 2019). His research has been published in leading international journals including Ethnopolitics, Social Movement Studies, Ethnic and Migration Studies, Critical Social Policy and Ethnicities. He was Principal Investigator of an Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded international project 'The Aesthetics of Protest: Visual Culture and Communication in Turkey’ (www.aestheticsofprotest.com) which ran from 2016-2018. In 2018-2019, he was awarded a EURIAS Fellowship at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in Amsterdam, where he was also a Marie Curie Fellow.

 

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