Events
Apr
5
2024

12th Annual Roma Conference: Confronting State Violence across the Globe

Time
1:00 pm - 6:30 pm ET
Venue
Thompson Room at the Barker Center (Cambridge, MA)
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Flier with red-blue-green background, white line sketch of globe along curved line. 12th Annual Roma Conference Confronting State Violence across the Globe Friday April 5th, 2024, 1:00pm-6:30pm ET Online and in-person: Thompson Room at the Barker Center | Cambridge, MA Register: hsph.me/2024-Roma-Conference Presented by: The FXB Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University, Romani Studies Program at Central European University, the Palestine Program for Health and Human Rights, the Center on Forced Displacement at Boston University, the Center for Human Rights and International Justice, History and Music Departments at the Morrissey College of Arts and Sciences at Boston College, the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, the Harvard University Committee on Ethnicity, Migration, Rights (EMR), and the Human Rights Program at Harvard Law School.
Flier with red-blue-green background, white line sketch of globe along curved line. 12th Annual Roma Conference Confronting State Violence across the Globe Friday April 5th, 2024, 1:00pm-6:30pm ET Online and in-person: Thompson Room at the Barker Center | Cambridge, MA Register: hsph.me/2024-Roma-Conference Presented by: The FXB Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University, Romani Studies Program at Central European University, the Palestine Program for Health and Human Rights, the Center on Forced Displacement at Boston University, the Center for Human Rights and International Justice, History and Music Departments at the Morrissey College of Arts and Sciences at Boston College, the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, the Harvard University Committee on Ethnicity, Migration, Rights (EMR), and the Human Rights Program at Harvard Law School.

In partnership with the Romani Studies Program at Central European University, the Palestine Program for Health and Human Rights, the Center on Forced Displacement at Boston University, the Center for Human Rights and International Justice, History and Music Departments at the Morrissey College of Arts and Sciences at Boston College, the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, the Harvard University Committee on Ethnicity, Migration, Rights (EMR), and the Human Rights Program at Harvard Law School, the Roma Program at the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights will host a free, hybrid format conference at Harvard University’s Barker Center (110 Thompson Room) on Friday, April 5, 2024. This constitutes the Roma Program’s 12th Roma conference marking the annual International Roma Day which is celebrated worldwide every April 8th.

The 2024 conference, titled Confronting State Violence across the Globe, will foster cross-border and inter-disciplinary dialogues and examination of state violence. It will identify pathways for enacting reforms in law, policy, and practice that center on justice, intersectional, and anti-racism principles. 

The conference has a dual focus:

Firstly, it aims to interrogate the genesis and sources of power and the mechanisms and manifestations of state violence experienced by racialized communities across the world. Secondly, it will endeavor to unpack the concept of “ungrievable lives,” the narratives of the Other, the Oriental, or the Oriental within, and the politics of death that validate state-sponsored violence and injustices. As Judith Butler says in Frames of War, “An ungrievable life is one that cannot be mourned because it has never lived, that is, it has never counted as a life at all. We can see the division of the globe into grievable and ungrievable lives from the perspective of those who wage war in order to defend the lives of certain communities and to defend them against the lives of others—even if it means taking those latter lives.” Discussing lives deemed ungrievable will be this year’s keynote speaker Dr. Cornel West.

View the full agenda here.

Register here. The conference will be followed by a free musical performance hosted by Boston College at 7:00pm on Saturday, April 6, 2024. Please click here for more information.