The Summer School will focus on the nexus between Romani studies and performance, with special attention paid to questions of visual culture and representation. The disquiet around increasing violence against and marginalisation of Roma across Europe lends this course a special urgency. The course will focus particularly on the enduring hierarchies, exclusions and stereotypes that Romani communities and individual citizens face in everyday life and in multiple sites and structures of the nation-state. It will explore artistic practice—particularly in the area of performance—with an eye toward openings for disruption and contestation, and will analyse the Romani histories across Europe and globally through the prism of post-colonial critique and the possibilities of decolonisation.The summer school will bring together academics and students with artists, activists and community stakeholders in a partnership that focuses on knowledge production and best practice. The school will be led by eminent Roma and non-Roma, and will feature outstanding Romani scholars and policymakers amongst its faculty.
Organisers are especially interested in recruiting young scholars of Romani background, (Ph.D. students, postdoctoral fellows, junior faculty) with a proven relevant research and teaching record, in the field of performance studies, history, sociology, political science or related humanities and social science disciplines. While the course is primarily aimed at encouraging young academics and those who are thinking of taking up an academic career to integrate Romani Studies and socio-cultural dimensions of performance practice and policy issues in their future research and teaching, it will also be of help to performance and other arts practitioners, policymakers and public servants, and others who deal with Romani communities in policy-making institutions.