Organizers:

Mariana Sabino-Salazar (Institute of Ethnology, Czech Academy of Sciences)

Karolina Válová (Institute of Ethnology, Czech Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Romance Studies, Charles University)

CALL FOR PAPERS

Deadline for submissions: 

1 December, 2025

Struggles over identity and representation are central to the politics of difference in contemporary and historical contexts. Many Romani families and individuals have been compelled to adopt more socially acceptable identities in response to social pressures (e.g. through ‘passing’); in other contexts, however, people might seek to reclaim once stigmatised identities. The legitimacy of Romani identity has frequently been questioned, as in the case of the ‘counterfeit Egyptians’ in 17th-century England, or when some scholars attempted to distinguish ‘true’ from ‘false’ Roma in search of the core of Romani authenticity. Drawing on and reinforcing the same discourse about authenticity and legitimacy, non-Romani individuals sometimes adopted what they perceived as markers of Romani identity and customs—sometimes for entertainment, as in fashion or carnivalesque masquerade, and sometimes as a more elaborated lifestyle choice, for example, by presenting themselves as exotic fortunetellers or by choosing to ‘live as Gypsies’ as a way to reject modernity.

This conference asks how individuals and groups claim, borrow, or mimic Romani cultural and ethnic markers, and how unequal power relations shape which identities are recognized as (in)authentic or (il)legitimate. By focusing on such processes, the conference examines tensions between creativity and exploitation, belonging and exclusion, as well as lived experience and symbolic appropriation. In doing so, the conference broadens the horizons of Romani studies by systematically analyzing the performance of identities that are not fixed but fluid, situational, and politically charged.

We invite scholars and researchers from anthropology, history, cultural studies, political science, religious studies, sociology, literature, and other disciplines to submit proposals that critically analyze specific contexts and dimensions underlying such phenomena while generating comparative insights.

The conference is organized by the Institute of Ethnology, Czech Academy of Sciences, and the Prague Center for Romani Histories at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University. It is supported by the Lumina Queruntur award (LQ300582201) – project “Romani Atlantic: Transcontinental Logic of Ethno-Racial Identities” and the ERC AdvG INHIST (Inclusive History of East-Central Europe: Mid-19th Century to Present).