Webinar “New perspectives on Romani pasts, presents and futures”

This RUTA webinar will introducing two brand new books, revisiting Romani histories and envisioning the path to racial justice. We will hear from Madeline Potter about her book The Roma: A Traveling History, which is a unique, deeply personal portrait of the nomadic Romani people and their on-going journey that sheds new light on their history, where they have traveled and settled, and what it means to be Romani today. Joining us will also be Margareta Matache, introducing her book The Permanence of Anti-Roma Racism: (Un)uttered Sentences. Employing theoretical frameworks of structural oppressions, anti-colonial and decolonial thought, racialization, and intersectionality, this book analyzes how deep historical legacies continue to shape anti-Roma racism as an enduring, structural form of oppression. The webinar will offer an opportunity for the RUTA communities to hear from authors of paradigm shifting books, reclaiming how Romani histories are told and re-visioning how they are theorised with.

Madeline Potter is an early career teaching and research fellow at the University of Edinburgh. Her work is in the field of 19th-century Gothic literature, and her monograph Theological Monsters was published by University of Wales Press. She also writes about Romani history, and her book The Roma: A  Travelling History was published by Penguin’s The Bodley Head in the UK and Harper Collins in the USA. She has also written and spoken about Romani representation in literature.

Margareta Matache, PhD, is a Harvard Lecturer and co-founder and Director of the Roma Program at Harvard University. She is also a member of the Lancet Commission on Racism, Structural Discrimination, and Global Health. Matache is the co-editor of Time for Reparations: A Global Perspective (2021) and Realizing Roma Rights (2017). Her most recent book, The Permanence of Anti-Roma Racism: (Un)uttered Sentences (Routledge, 2025), examines anti-Roma racism and links to other oppressions.

Moderator: 

Tereza Hendl is a political philosopher working on issues of global health justice. Her research explores oppression, refusal, justice, and solidarity; the ethics and epistemology of health technologies and interventions; and East–West hierarchies of knowledge. Together with Daniel James and Morgan Thompson, she received the 2025 Charles Mills Prize from the Society for Applied Philosophy for their paper, “Who Counts in Official Statistics? Ethical-Epistemic Issues in German Migration and the Collection of Racial or Ethnic Data,” which critically examines data collection practices that hinder efforts to trace and address racial inequalities, thereby maintaining white ignorance about racism.