ROCIT team members attended the GLS conference in Sofia (25–27 September 2024). This event is an important interdisciplinary platform that annually brings together Romani studies scholars worldwide. The ROCIT team members participated in the panel The Roma in Ukraine in the Context of the War, organized by Markéta Hajská, another project member. The panel is unique in that it was conducted entirely in Romani and, at the same time, had a strongly collaborative aspect, connecting the contributions of people from academia and experts by experience. As such, the panel was well attended and had a wide appeal in an otherwise purely English-oriented conference. Individual contributions throughout the panel followed the experiences of Ukrainian Romani refugees and the challenges they faced after arriving in various European countries, here primarily in Czechia. On the other hand, they also described various mechanisms of racial discrimination against Ukrainian Roma, who were often excluded from systems of assistance to war refugees after the full Russian invasion of Ukraine. The speakers included Markéta Hajská (Faculty of Arts, Charles University) with her paper The Central Station in Prague: Discriminating Treatment of the Roma from Ukraine; Dana Ema Hrušková (Faculty of Arts, Charles University) with her paper The Roma in The War – The View of The Roma on the Discrimination of the Ukrainian Roma; Iveta Kokyová (Faculty of Arts, Charles University) with her paper War and Humanitarian Aid Through the Eyes of Ukrainian Roma; and Yanush Panchenko (Institute of Ethnology, Czech Academy of Sciences) with his paper Ukrainian Roma on the Way to a New Identity in the Context of War and Displacement.
