Latest News
2024 Annual Meeting -- Deadline for Abstracts Extended
Deadline Extension Announcement
2024 Annual Meeting of the Gypsy Lore Society and Conference on Romani Studies
We want to say thank you to everyone who has submitted their proposals so far. Due to the interest in the 2024 Gypsy Lore Society Annual Meeting and Conference on Romani Studies in Sofia, we have decided to extend the deadline for individual paper proposals and pre-arranged panel proposals. We wish to inform you that the new date is April 26th, 2024. The other deadlines will remain the same. We hope this extension gives you more time and opportunity for your submissions!
We invite contributions on any aspect of Romani Studies and encourage participants from various disciplines, including history, ethnology, anthropology, sociology, political science, linguistics, international studies, security studies, area studies, economics, geography, literature, and other fields of humanities and social sciences.
Both theoretical studies and empirical contributions, including good fieldwork presentations, are welcome. Each conference attendee may submit only one individual paper proposal and one co-authored paper proposal. Papers should be planned to last 20 minutes with an additional 10 minutes allotted for discussion. All paper proposals undergo a peer-review process by the Academic Committee.
The 2024 Annual Meeting of the Gypsy Lore Society and Conference on Romani Studies is scheduled for September, 25 th -27 th . The conference is organised on behalf of the Gypsy Lore Society by the Balkan Ethnology Department, Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Studies with Ethnographic Museum at Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia, Bulgaria.
Individual paper proposals should include:
- Name(s), email address(es) and affiliation of the author(s)
- Title and abstract of the individual paper, not shorter than 200 words and not longer than 400 words (excluding references)
- Indication whether the paper is proposed as an individual paper, or as a contribution to a particular open panel.
Pre-arranged panel proposals should include:
- Name(s), email address(es) and affiliation of the convenor(s) and participants
- Title and abstract of the panel (200-400 words)
- Titles of included papers and their abstracts (not shorter than 200 words and not longer than 400 words, excluding references).
All proposals should be submitted in doc, docx, or rtf format to: gypsyloreconference2024@gmail.com
Authors will be notified whether their proposals have been accepted by 15 May 2024.
The conference will be held in person.
Magdalena Slavkova, on behalf of the Conference Organising Committee
2024 Annual Meeting of the Gypsy Lore Society and Conference on Romani Studies -- Call for Papers
The 2024 Annual Meeting of the Gypsy Lore Society and Conference on Romani Studies will be held in Sofia, Bulgaria, from September 25 to 27, 2024. The conference will be hosted on behalf of the Gypsy Lore Society by the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Studies with Ethnographic Museum, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.
Find the Call for Papers here.
Call for Papers: Special Issue of Romani Studies
Thematic issue of Romani studies 1/2025: Religion and Roma social inclusion
Guest editors
Stefan Tobler, “Lucian Blaga” University of Sibiu, Romania, stefan.tobler@ev-theol.ro
Marius Parno, West University of Timișoara, Romania, parno_marius@yahoo.com
Call for papers
In many countries, religion continues to be a significant factor in society. The question of what role religion and religious actors have played and continue to play on the long road to social inclusion of the Roma is therefore important.
This can be a positive or a negative role. In the past, religious actors - together with the majority of society - have often contributed to the marginalization or even exclusion from social life of the Roma. The research on the topic of slavery in the Romanian principalities is just one example, suggestive of one of the first periods when this phenomenon began to be debated and legislated in this part of Europe. There are currently very different trends on approaching this field of research. An important role is played by the fact that a significant part of Roma has chosen a new religious affiliation in recent decades, moving towards various protestant churches. This change has an influence on whether and how social inclusion succeeds. The aim of the planned issue of Romani Studies is to illustrate this range of possible attitudes. Several research projects have already been carried out in this sense, including SIRONA 2010 in Slovakia and PARI (2021-2024) in Romania.
We encourage contributions from different disciplines in social sciences and humanities, like history, sociology, religious studies, social work, anthropology, Romani studies. Submitted papers could touch one of the following issues:
Relations between religious denominations and Roma in the past;
Religious actors and their current contribution or lack thereof to the participation of
Roma in all aspects of society;
Participatory approaches in working in/with Roma communities, especially in the context of faith-based actors;
The religiosity of Roma and the question of its empowering potential;
The influence and contribution of churches in the process of socio-economic and educational well-being of Roma communities and in Roma social movements;
The affiliation of Roma to religious institutions between exclusion and inclusion;
Changes in the religious affiliation of Roma and its influences on social inclusion;
Socio-economic aspects in Protestant Roma communities;
The impact of major religious events on the cohesion and identity of Roma communities;
The role of Roma spiritual leaders in mediating community conflicts and promoting peace.
Final date for abstracts: April 15, 2024
Only the authors of accepted abstracts will be invited to submit a full paper. Please also include a list of the bibliographic references you are working with. An invitation to submit a full paper does not constitute a commitment for publication; all papers will be subject to anonymous peer review following the submission. The special issue is planned to be published as open access.
Final date for papers: September 15, 2024
Feel free to contact the guest editors with any queries regarding the issue. If you would like to contribute, please send the title of your contribution and an abstract of the paper until April 15, 2024 to stefan.tobler@ev-theol.ro
Romani Studies, Vol. 33, No. 2, December 2023 Now Online
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The above issue is now available online at:
https://liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/toc/rost/33/2?ai=aqo5&ui=awkd&af=T
The table of contents for this issue is listed below. Click the links
below to view the abstract for each article, or click the link above
to read the table of contents online. If you wish to update your
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The origin of the self-appellation Sinti: A historical and linguistic
examination
DAPHNE REITINGER
Romani Studies, Vol. 33, No. 2: 157-187.
https://liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/abs/10.3828/rost.2023.8?ai=aqo5&ui=awkd&af=T
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Repressions of the OGPU-NKVD-NKGB against Gypsies 1932–1941: On newly
discovered materials from Ukrainian archives
ANDRII ZHYVYUK
Romani Studies, Vol. 33, No. 2: 189-209.
https://liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/abs/10.3828/rost.2023.9?ai=aqo5&ui=awkd&af=T
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Migratory encounters, common idiom, and the king: The relationship
between two Roma groups from Poland in transnational social space
ELŻBIETA MIRGA-WÓJTOWICZ, MICHAŁ P. GARAPICH and KAMILA FIAŁKOWSKA
Romani Studies, Vol. 33, No. 2: 211-238.
https://liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/abs/10.3828/rost.2023.10?ai=aqo5&ui=awkd&af=T
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Attitudes towards the mother tongue among Roma in Poland
EWA NOWICKA and MACIEJ WITKOWSKI
Romani Studies, Vol. 33, No. 2: 239-264.
https://liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/abs/10.3828/rost.2023.11?ai=aqo5&ui=awkd&af=T
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The folklore of the European Roma and mythologies of the Indian tribal
world
YAROSLAV VASSILKOV
Romani Studies, Vol. 33, No. 2: 265-280.
https://liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/abs/10.3828/rost.2023.12?ai=aqo5&ui=awkd&af=T
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Review article
Victoria Shmidt
Romani Studies, Vol. 33, No. 2: 281-294.
https://liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/abs/10.3828/rost.2023.16?ai=aqo5&ui=awkd&af=T
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Reviews
Hristo Kyuchukov, Anna Clara Viana de Oliveira and Hristo Kyuchukov
Romani Studies, Vol. 33, No. 2: 295-307.
https://liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/abs/10.3828/rost.2023.13?ai=aqo5&ui=awkd&af=T
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Index to Volume 33
Romani Studies, Vol. 33, No. 2: 309-310.
https://liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/abs/10.3828/rost.2023.14?ai=aqo5&ui=awkd&af=T
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Link to the Full Issue
Romani Studies, Vol. 33, No. 2: 157-310.
https://liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/abs/10.3828/rost.2023.15?ai=aqo5&ui=awkd&af=T
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…to jsou tĕžké vzpomínky Wins Gypsy Lore Society Book Prize in Romani Studies
The book …to jsou tĕžké vzpomínky (…these are painful memories) is the first winner of the Gypsy Lore Society Book Prize in Romani Studies.
The first prize-winner of the Gypsy Lore Society Book Prize in Romani Studies is the book …to jsou tĕžké vzpomínky (…these are painful memories: Recollections of Roma and Sinti about life before the war and in the protectorate) by Jana Horváthová. The nearly 800-page volume, published in the Czech language in Brno by the Museum of Romani Culture and Veterne mlyny in 2021, brings thematically sorted authentic memories of Czech and Moravian Roma and Sinti from the pre-war period and the period of the protectorate. See more...
Venera Achim (1962-2023)
Romanian historian Venera Achim sadly passed away on October 15, 2023 after a long and brave battle with cancer.
Venera Achim was born in 1962 and graduated from the Faculty of History at the University of Bucharest in 1987. From 1992 until her death, she worked as an editor for "Revista Istorica" and as a researcher at the Institute of History "Nicolae Iorga". In 2005, she obtained a PhD in Economics with the topic "Gypsies from the Romanian Principalities during the Manumission Period (1830 - 1860): economic and statistical aspects". Venera Achim authored numerous economic and social history studies, many of which dealt with Roma slavery in the Romanian territories. Her extensive and original research resulted in valuable books and articles.
We fondly remember her gracious personality during the annual meeting of the Gypsy Lore Society and Conference on Romani Studies, which she co-organized with her husband, historian Viorel Achim, in Bucharest in September 2018.
Her untimely passing is a loss not only to her grieving family, colleagues, and friends, but also to all who study Romani history and slavery in Romania.
2023 Conference Call for Papers Posted
The 2023 Annual Meeting of the Gypsy Lore Society and Conference on Gypsy Studies will be held October 3rd to October 6th in São Paulo, Brazil. The conference is organised on behalf of the Gypsy Lore Society by Sesc São Paulo.
Find the Call for Papers and further conference information at: https://www.gypsyloresociety.org/annual-meeting
Gypsy Lore Society Activities Update
Changes are coming to Gypsy Lore Society activities.
You have already noticed that the Newsletter of the Gypsy Lore Society is now available online for all to read.
Beginning in 2023, Romani Studies will be published as an open-access journal. Liverpool University Press will continue to publish the journal on behalf of the Gypsy Lore Society and mount its content on the LUP platform.
What does this change mean for readers?
You will read the journal in digital form. The journal will be available free of charge to everyone. The journal will not be available in paper form.
It is hoped that open access will bring Romani Studies to a wider readership.
What does this change mean for contributors to Romani Studies?
To help cover publication costs, an article publication fee (APC) will be charged by Liverpool University Press after an article is accepted for publication. The fee is GBP 1,250 / USD 1500 for each article. Authors who do not have the means to cover the publication fee through grants or institutional support may request a waiver. Members of the Gypsy Lore Society will have priority for fee waivers. Please direct questions to romanistudies.authors@gmail.com.
What does this change mean for the bottom line of the Gypsy Lore Society?
Up to now the Gypsy Lore Society and Romani Studies have been financed mainly by individual membership dues and a portion of the institutional subscriptions collected by Liverpool University Press. Conference participant fees go to cover conference costs.
With open access there is no subscription income. Therefore the Society must cover all the Romani Studies publication costs.
Donations toward open access publication costs and other Gypsy Lore Society activities are always welcome.
A special fund has been established to help cover Romani Studies open access publication costs. This fund will be used to help cover article processing fees for authors who otherwise do not have access to funding. You can make your donation here, on the membership information page, or contact the Gypsy Lore Society treasurer, treasurer.gypsyloresociety@gmail.com.
What does this mean for you as a Gypsy Lore Society member?
Your membership dues will continue to support the activities of the Gypsy Lore Society -- the Newsletter, the annual conference and, of course, Romani Studies.
Members will continue to pay discounted conference fees. Members will have access to the Romani Studies electronic archive, 2005-2022.
Members are eligible -- and are encouraged -- to vote for the Board of Directors, the governing body of the Gypsy Lore Society.
Membership fees
Membership dues have remained at $40 per year since 2012 . Beginning with the 2023 membership year, dues will be $50.
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Marian Madison Gypsy Lore Society Young Scholar’s Prize in Romani Studies
The call for submissions for the current cycle has been posted. The deadline for receipt of papers is 31 March 2023.
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Call for Papers for Special Issues:
1) Roma women and civic emancipation in the interwar period
Guest editors: Raluca Bianca Roman, Queen’s University Belfast (raluca.roman@qub.ac.uk) & Sofiya Zahova, University of Iceland (zahova@hi.is)
Final date for abstracts: September 2nd, 2022
For more information see below.
2) Romani people as object and subject of scientific inquiry: scientification of Roma or romanifying science?
Guest editors: Victoria Shmidt, Institute of History, University of Graz, Austria (victoria.shmidt@uni-graz.at) & Bernadette Nadya Jaworsky, Faculty of Social Sciences, MUNI, Czech Rep. (jaworsky@fss.muni.cz)
Final date for abstracts: November 4th, 2022
For more information see below.
Thematic issue of Romani Studies 33.1/2023
Roma women and civic emancipation in the interwar period
Guest editors
Raluca Bianca Roman, Queen’s University Belfast, raluca.roman@qub.ac.uk
Sofiya Zahova, University of Iceland, zahova@hi.is
Call for papers
Over the past years, there has been a surge in research projects exploring the processes of Roma mobilisation and Roma civic emancipation, both historical and contemporary. Likewise, a rise in scholarship on the role of Roma women within the Roma movement has led to a reconsideration of how Roma women have shaped their communities, how active they have been as agents of change and how they their contribution to the process of Roma mobilisation more broadly. Despite this, there remain substantial gaps in the historical knowledge of the role of Roma women, specifically within the Roma civic emancipation movement from the start of the 20th century.
The aim of the thematic issue is to begin filling this gap, through an exploration of the involvement, life stories, engagement and input of Roma women during the early decades of the Roma civic emancipation process. As research within the RomaInterbellum ERC Advanced Grant has shown, the interwar period in particular was one of the most productive periods in the history of Roma mobilisation, with the setting up of Roma organisations, Roma journals and newpapers, the convening of congresses and the rise of a Roma intellectual strata, aiming to put forth specific agendas for the improvement of the lives of Roma communities across Central, South Eastern and Eastern Europe. Nevertheless, little attention has been paid to the specific and important role played by Roma women in this process, while the RomaInterbellum project has demonstrated the need for more work on the issue of women’s engagement in Roma mobilisation. This thematic issue of Romani Studies aims to address these gaps.
Roma lives cannot be detached from broader historical, social, and national circumstances and contexts. Along with ‘majority’ members of the macro-societies in which they live, Roma women and men have experienced the breakdown of old Empires and the establishment of new national states. Roma women were part of this history. The aim of the special issue is to look at Roma women as an integral and inseparable part of these historical shifts and of mainstream history more generally. We therefore invite paper contributions that address the position, role and involvement of Roma women in the Roma emancipation movement in the interwar period.
Contributions based on historical sources are invited from a range of national contexts, with a particular focus placed on countries from Central, South Eastern and Eastern Europe, as well as the Soviet Union. Other country contexts that address these overlapping themes would also be considered.
Final date for abstracts: September 2, 2022
Abstracts should be up to 500 words. Only the authors of accepted abstracts will be invited to submit a full paper. Please note that, as all papers are subject to anonymous peer review, an invitation to submit a full paper does not necessarily constitute a commitment to publication The special issue is planned to be published as open access.
Final date for papers: February 1, 2023
For any queries regarding the issue, feel free to contact the guest editors. If you would like to contribute, please send the title of your contribution and abstract to
raluca.roman@qub.ac.uk and zahova@hi.is
Thematic issue of Romani Studies 1/2024
ROMANI PEOPLE AS OBJECT AND SUBJECT OF SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY:
SCIENTIFICATION OF ROMA OR ROMANIFYING SCIENCE?
Guest editors
Victoria Shmidt, Institute of History, University of Graz, Austria, victoria.shmidt@uni-graz.at
Bernadette Nadya Jaworsky, Faculty of Social Sciences, MUNI, Czech Rep., jaworsky@fss.muni.cz
Call for papers
The burgeoning literature concerning Romani people highlights the multiple challenges that scholars and laypeople face when scientific argument has garnered the power to influence politics, public opinion, or even to shape identity. Issue 1/2024 of Romani Studies introduces the debates surrounding the production and circulation of knowledge about Romani people. We invite those who are interested in critical reflection on their own research strategies to revise it in terms of epistemic justice and epistemic virtue. We ask potential contributors to reflect on their own experiences in terms of two interrelated but different streams of research, namely, the “scientification” of Romani people, or recognizing their history and contemporariness through the lenses of different theories, and the “Romanifying” of scholarship, or what happens when methods of scientific investigation are transformed or even deconstructed by introducing Romani people as subjects and objects of research.
The special issue aims to bring together scholars from different fields who employ participatory and interactionist approaches to the study of the past and present of Roma in different regions of the world. The main goal of the volume is to develop an interdisciplinary view on the options and limits for producing knowledge about Romani people, without aggravating epistemic injustice against them. Both processes, the scientification of Romani people and the Romanifying of science, bring advantages and disandvantges to Romani people themselves, and our mission is to discuss these processes in terms of interdisciplinary scientific argument.
We are specifically interested in addressing questions concerning the role of scientific argument in policymaking, scientific argument for recognition, and scientific argument in historicization:
Scientific argument in policymaking concerning Roma: What are some of the “good” and “bad” examples of using scientific argument in favor of advancing access to social rights for Romani people? How is scientific argument important to the aims of minimizing inequality and re-establishing justice? What are the perspectives and prospects of participatory, applied research for these purposes? What are the main obstacles to the “proper” recruitment of scientific argument in different strategies of achieving social justice for Roma, including strategic litigation, social inclusion, and so on? What are the hidden risks of using categories such as “human rights,” “justice,” and “anti-discriminatory practice” with the aim of making science more Romanified?
Scientific argument in recognizing Roma: How do we argue for distinctive experiences and subjectivities, without falling into the trap of essentialization or ignoring the issue of “otherness”? What are the options and limits for history, linguistics, anthropology, medicine, and interdisciplinary approaches to study individuality and collectivity among Romani people? How do different sciences solve the task of avoiding the production of epistemic injustice? How serious are the risks of producing new forms of symbolic violence aimed at imposing particular identities and patterns for self-determination, e.g. pro-activist positions within approaches like critical whiteness, postcolonial feminism, or intersectionality?
Scientific argument in historicizing Roma: What are the differences between the comparative history vs. the entangled history of Romani people? What is the role of bringing together the pasts of Roma and other minorities, e.g., Jews, African Americans, or Latin Americans? What are some of the commonalities and differences? What are the perspectives of transnational history on Romani people? What are the potentials and limits of critical pedagogical approaches to the history of Roma (to derive historical lessons from the past)? Does the timeline of Romani history matter?
Virtue and vice epistemologies in Romani studies: How can mapping the current scholarship of Romani studies in terms of epistemic virtues and vices contribute to epistemic justice for Romani people? In what ways can the epistemic behaviours that lead to epistemic vices be explored and discussed in order to prevent epistemic injustice? What are the possible pathways for interdisciplinary reflection aimed at advancing virtue epistemologies? Is it reasonable to discuss the original accounts of epistemic injustice concerning Romani people as Romanifying science? Is gender-race-sexuality intersectionality an option or a trap for improving the epistemologies in Romani studies?
Final date for abstracts: November 4, 2022
Only the authors of accepted abstracts will be invited to submit a full paper. An invitation to submit a full paper does not constitute a commitment for publication; all papers will be subject to anonymous peer review following the submission. The special issue is planned to be published as open access.
Final date for papers: March 21, 2023
Feel free to contact the guest editors with any queries regarding the issue. If you would like to contribute, please send the title of your contribution and an abstract of the paper to