Announcing Our 2021 Educational Festival
Dear all,
We at the Roma Peoples Project at Columbia University are excited to host the second edition of our educational festival, On Roma Resilience & Other Compelling Stories. Events will take place from November 7 to December 17. Our Eventbrite profile outlines our program of events, which will explore the global significance of the Roma cause; Roma identity, self-expression and representation; ways to redefine power for marginalized groups; and other compelling stories from Roma and Roma allies.
In June 2020, we held our first annual festival, quickly adapting to online forms of community engagement with a series of events that explored connections between Roma studies and topics in human rights, social justice, global studies, the arts and more. Our goal was to hold engaging, informative and creative events where our community could learn and connect with one another, while also raising critical funds for the Roma Peoples Project.
This year, we are thrilled to host Roma scholars and storytellers such as bestselling Roma author Oksana Marafioti; and hear stories of courage and redefining tradition in your own terms from Rowena Marin, Jessica Reidy and Paulina Verminski. We are also looking forward to lectures and workshops from a diversity of scholars, writers and journalists, including Arjun Appadurai, world-renowned professor in global studies; Vishakha Desai, Senior Advisor for Global Affairs to the President of Columbia University; and Michael Massing, major writer and thinker on our cultural narratives.
For more information about our events and speakers, we invite you to visit our profile and browse our events. If you are able, we also encourage you to purchase a pass for all festival events, which will make a real difference to us. We hope that joining multiple events will open up new angles and perspectives for understanding the global Roma story.
As another way to support our work, we are offering the option of sponsoring a mini-scholarship for a student to attend the festival. See here for more information about our scholarship program.
To learn more about the Roma Peoples Project, we recommend: a feature in Vogue on Roma representation in the fashion industry; a feature in PRI’s The World on Roma refugees arriving in the United States; take a look at an ongoing campaign, in which members of our community share on the topic of “What does the Roma cause mean to you?” Since Halloween is getting close, we also recommend our founder Cristiana Grigore’s essay in Newsweek: “I’m Roma, and Your Gypsy Halloween Costume is More Trick than Treat.”
Our work is possible through small donations and pro bono support from scholars, professionals and students dedicated to creating a home for Roma studies in the United States. We firmly believe that Roma and Roma studies, a long neglected topic in academia and society, should be at the forefront of our contemporary understanding of human rights, social justice, global mobility and global identities. In the year ahead, we will continue our capacity building moving toward our goal of becoming a permanent space for Roma studies in New York City and the United States.
Please join our educational festival where nuanced, accurate, inspiring Roma stories are part of the mainstream conversation, support the Roma Peoples Project by getting tickets to our events, and share with your friends and community. We also hope you will message us your impressions!
Thank you and see you at the festival!
Sarah Zawacki - Director, On Roma Resilience & Other Compelling Stories, 2021 & Cristiana Grigore - Founder of the Roma Peoples Project at Columbia University