International Conference “The Roma Civic Movement in Europe between 1900 and 1945”

On 6 February 2026, an international conference entitled The Roma Civic Movement in Europe between 1900 and 1945 will take place in Sofia, Bulgaria. The event is co-organised by our institute within the research cluster Ethnic and Minority Studies, core topic Romani Studies. The conference is an output of the research project eHistory of Roma Emancipation (09I01-03-V08-00001), funded by EU NextGenerationEU through the Recovery and Resilience Plan of the Slovak Republic.

The conference is organised in response to a request from the Roma community in Bulgaria and commemorates the 120th anniversary of the First Roma Congress (December 1905). It will be held from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. at the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Studies with the Ethnographic Museum of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.

The event will bring together scholars and Roma activists to explore the development of the Roma civic movement in Europe from the early twentieth century until 1945, while also addressing contemporary issues in Roma activism. A peer-reviewed volume of conference proceedings will be published following the event.

The conference is coordinated by Prof. DrSc. Huseyin S. Kyuchuk and organised by the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Studies with the Ethnographic Museum (BAS, Sofia), the Institute of Education at the University of Silesia (Katowice, Poland), and the Institute of Ethnology and Social Anthropology of the Slovak Academy of Sciences (Bratislava, Slovakia).

Detailed program can be found HERE.

The conference will also be accessible online.

Online participation (Zoom):

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88936964879?pwd=fPSwz0mTUgpbfFk4PM7br3JYNX5osv.1

Meeting ID: 889 3696 4879

Passcode: 515218