Online Training on Romani Identity, History and Culture

The European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture (ERIAC), is pleased to announce the online training Roma(ni) Past – Europe’s Future: Why Embracing the EU’s Largest Ethnic Minority Matters, dedicated to strengthening understanding of Roma identity, history, culture, and the realities of antigypsyism, organized within the framework of the ERIACNET4EU initiative.

This training aims to equip public officials, educators, cultural workers, and other professionals with the knowledge and sensitivity needed to better understand Roma experiences, recognize and challenge Antigypsyism, and support more inclusive and respectful practices. Participants will explore the evolution of Roma identity, the cultural contributions of Roma communities across Europe, and the structural forces that continue to shape inequalities today.

Agenda

November 14, 2025

9:30 – 17:40 CET

Online (with registration)

Register here: https://form.eriac.org/events/online-training-on-romani-identity-history-and-culture?source=direct_link&

9:30 – 9:45 CET Welcome address and opening remarks

Anna Mirga-Kruszelnicka – Deputy Director, ERIAC

Presenting the agenda and speakers

9:45 – 11:00 CET “Roma Identity Through the Ages”

Trainer: Raul Cârstocea

This session will focus on Roma identity and its evolution through the ages. To do so, it will begin with a discussion of the ways in which ‘identity’ in general is understood in the social sciences and humanities, considering both self-identification and external ascription. We will then proceed to look at the history of Roma in Europe and how our present identity was historically constituted, at the interplay of factors operating both within and from outside the community. We will conclude with a reflection on where we are now in terms of self-representations of Roma identity, initiating a dialogue on how a Roma politics of the future could look like.

11:00 – 11:15 CET Coffee break

11:15 – 12:30 CET “Co-Governing the Future: Roma Politics and Europe’s Constitutional Horizon”

Trainer: Mensur Haliti

Europe’s democratic future will not be secured in its centers of power but along the frontier where its ideals confront the limits of their own architecture. Roma politics make that frontier visible. They expose how systems built to guarantee equality can, through repetition and hierarchy, reproduce dependence and suppress new forms of political agency. Yet within that tension lies a civic resource that Europe can no longer afford to overlook: a young, transnational, and steadfastly pro-European electorate whose belief in democratic belonging endures even as institutions lose faith in themselves. To engage Roma politics, therefore, is not an act of benevolence but of strategic necessity – an acknowledgment that Europe’s stability, legitimacy, and endurance as a political order will depend on how it learns to co-govern the shaping of future political systems alongside, and ultimately constitutive of, Roma.

12:30 – 13:30 CET Lunch break

13:30 – 14:45 CET “Beyond Representation: Cultural Mediation and the Challenges of Contemporary Romani Creation in Europe’s Peripheries”

Trainer: Miguel Ángel Vargas

This session addresses the structural limits that contemporary Romani creation faces within the institutional frameworks of representative democracy in Europe. Drawing on five years of practice-based research in Seville’s Polígono Sur, I examine how public cultural programs and diversity policies often reformulate Romani experiences through the prism of “Gypsy/Roma culture” as a reflection of the aesthetic regime of visibility, rather than as a process of emancipation. The persistence of antigypsyism in public cultural policy – especially in urban peripheries – reveals how inclusion can operate as another form of control. In response, I propose cultural mediation not as ethnic brokerage but as an ethics of encounter.

14:45 – 16:00 CET “The Fundamentals of Anti-Roma Racism: From Historical Legacies to Structural Oppression”

Trainer: Margareta Matache

This lecture aims to define and unpack anti-Roma racism as a fundamental and permanent form of structural oppression in European societies. We will examine the historical genesis of anti-Roma racism, beginning with the racialized system of slavery in the Romanian principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia, and extending through centuries marked by expulsions, killings, and exclusions across Europe. Furthermore, we will analyse the mechanisms, legacies, and continuities of anti-Roma racism, situating these within broader global frameworks and theories of oppression, racism, racialization, and slavery.

16:00 – 16:15 CET Coffee break

16:15 – 17:30 CET “The Romani Holocaust: Memory, History, Representation”

Trainer: Ioanida Costache

Despite being one of the lesser-known aspects of the Holocaust, the genocide of the Romani people was systematic and devastating. This session will examine how the Romani Holocaust has been remembered – or forgotten – within broader Holocaust discourse and how Romani communities have sought to preserve their history. This seminar explores the history and memory of the Romani Holocaust through historical accounts, survivor testimonies, and contemporary efforts at commemoration. We will engage with historiographical debates, primary documents, and cultural representations to foster a deeper understanding of the impact and legacy of the Romani Holocaust.

17:30 – 17:40 CET Closing remarks

Objectives

The primary objectives of this training course are:

Increase Understanding of Roma Identity and History

• • Provide participants with a comprehensive overview of the origins and evolution of Roma identity, examining the historical contexts that have shaped Roma communities across Europe.
  • Highlight the resilience and adaptability of the Roma people in the face of centuries of marginalization and exclusion.

Recognize and Celebrate Roma Cultural Contributions

• • Illuminate the rich and diverse cultural heritage of the Roma, showcasing their contributions to European arts.
  • Encourage appreciation and integration of Roma cultural elements into broader European cultural narratives.

Address Antigypsyism and Promote Inclusion

• • Explore the roots and manifestations of Antigypsyism, equipping participants with the knowledge to recognize and challenge this form of racism in their professional and personal environments.
  • Discuss effective strategies for combating Antigypsyism and fostering an inclusive society that respects and values Roma people.

Empower Participants with Knowledge and Tools for Advocacy

1. • Provide actionable insights and resources to support participants in advocating for Roma rights and promoting cultural understanding in their respective fields.
   • Encourage participants to engage with and support Roma communities through informed and culturally sensitive practices.

Expected Outcomes

By the end of the training, participants will:

Enhanced Awareness and Knowledge

• • Gain a deeper understanding of Roma identity, history, and the socio-cultural dynamics that influence Roma communities today.
  • Acquire knowledge of the historical and ongoing contributions of Roma to European culture and society.

Improved Sensitivity and Competence

• • Develop a greater sensitivity to the issues facing Roma communities, particularly in the context of Antigypsyism and other forms of discrimination.
  • Build competence in recognizing and addressing Antigypsyism within institutional and societal contexts.

Empowered to Act and Advocate

• • Be equipped with practical tools and strategies to advocate for Roma rights and inclusion in their professional roles.
  • Leave the training with a commitment to fostering a more inclusive and equitable society for the Roma and other marginalized communities.

Stronger Networks for Collaboration

1. • Establish connections with other participants, trainers, and Roma communities, fostering a network of individuals committed to promoting Roma inclusion and cultural understanding.
   • Identify opportunities for future collaboration and continued learning on Roma issues.

Meet the trainers

Raul Cârstocea is Professor of History at Maynooth University and Principal Investigator on the ERC Consolidator Grant Insurgent Temporalities: Fascism as a Global Anti-Universalist Project (INTEMPO). His work focuses on the Holocaust, fascism, nationalism, and more broadly on state-building processes in modern Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe and their consequences for minority groups. He is a member of the Barvalipe Academy of ERIAC, Co-Convenor of the BASEES Study Group for Minority History, and co-editor of the Modern History of Politics and Violence book series at Bloomsbury. He has served as Vice-Chair of the Scientific Advisory Council (SAC) of the Observatory on History Teaching in Europe at the Council of Europe from 2021 to 2024, and as Chair of the SAC from 2024 to July 2025.

Mensur Haliti is Vice President for Democracy and Network Development at the Roma Foundation for Europe, Founder of the Roma for Democracy Foundation, and Board Chair of the European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture. He holds a Master of Public Administration from the Hertie School of Governance, with specialization in governing regimes and corruption control, and has completed executive programs at Harvard Kennedy School, MIT Sloan, and Oxford Saïd Business School. For more than two decades, Haliti has advanced Roma politics, institutional reform, and democratic governance across Europe’s most complex policy environments. As part of his doctoral research, Haliti is developing Romanipe: The Legal and Political Order of the Roma – a constitutional system that reconstructs over two millennia of Roma governance. His work demonstrates how Romanipe operates as a living constitutional order – enduring without territorial monopoly, codification, or external recognition. His research contributes to a new constitutional canon positioning Roma political thought as a sovereign tradition that informs the reconstruction of governance, affirms the legitimacy of Roma self-rule, and participates in the co-design of future political orders.

Miguel Ángel Vargas (Lebrija, 1978) is an Art Historian and Theatre Director. An independent researcher and artist who combines flamenco, theatre, and Romani history as experiential material for artistic and academic inquiry. He has worked internationally as an actor, director, set designer, curator, production manager, and cultural practitioner. Vargas has collaborated with academic institutions such as Central Saint Martins College of Arts (London) and the Critical Approach to Romani Studies Program at the Central European University (Budapest–Vienna); has advised cultural institutions including the National Gallery of Art (Washington) and Cultura y Ciudadanía (Spanish Ministry of Culture); and was a member of the Barvalipe Academy of ERIAC. Between 2021 and 2025, he was part of Seville’s municipal program for cultural mediation (ICAS). Since 2021, he has lectured in the Master’s program for Research and Analysis of Flamenco at the Universidad Pablo de Olavide, where he is also completing a PhD in Contemporary History focused on urban racialization.

Margareta Matache, PhD, is a Harvard Lecturer, co-founder, and Director of the Roma Program at Harvard University. She also serves on the Lancet Commission on Racism, Structural Discrimination, and Global Health. Matache is the co-editor of Time for Reparations: A Global Perspective (2021) and Realizing Roma Rights (2017). Her book, The Permanence of Anti-Roma Racism: (Un)uttered Sentences (Routledge), which explores anti-Roma racism and its specific and universal underpinnings, manifestations, and links to other oppressions, will be released in December 2025. With 25+ years in organizational leadership, policy advocacy, social change interventions, and academic work, she focuses on framing and addressing anti-Roma racism.

Ioanida Costache is Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology and, by courtesy, Anthropology, at Stanford University. She is also an affiliate of the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity. Her work explores the legacies of Romani historical trauma, and the feminist critiques of the present, inscribed in Romani music, sound, and art. Her writing has been published in EuropeNow, RevistaARTA, Critical Romani Studies, and European History Quarterly. Her research has been supported by two Fulbright Grants and the Council of European Studies. She has held visiting and postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Pennsylvania, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and the USC Shoah Foundation.