Important note: This talk has been postponed from 8 February 2023 to 15 February 2023.

Romani cultural heritage is influential across the world; however, Romani knowledge production and narratives lack recognition in academia and public representation. Since the Enlightenment thinker Heinrich Moritz Gottlieb Grellmann published his work “Dissertation on the Gipsies” in 1783, Romani people are constantly objects of international scholarship. More precisely, they are facing academic anti-Gypsyism that has contributed to intolerant attitudes and oppression in the society. Hundreds of years the various manifestations of anti-Gypsyism, have subconsciously shaped and damaged the Romani identity politics and obliterated and vanished their narratives from history. The lecture presents a critical Romani research on the past periods, approaches and dilemmas of the Studies on “Gypsyies” and the Romani Scholarship, through the lens of academic anti-Gypsyism.

Romani academic recognition requests ground-breaking reflective actions to cultivate Romani identity-politics, cultural heritage and collective memory. Essential knowledge production is a fundamental need whereby the Romani people can challenge the status quo of several centuries, and the lack of representation and recognition. Critical narratives are necessary to analyse the social and historical embeddedness of such categories and distinctions as “Roma/Gadjo” and “Gypsy/Peasant”. These positions are currently still at odds with what practitioners of privileged science call “suffering discourse”.