Unraveling injustice and power structures
Date and Time: Friday, April 4, 2025 at 12:30pm – 6:15pm EDT. Reception to follow at 6:30pm.
Location: Smith Campus Center, 1350 Massachusetts Avenue, 10th Floor, Cambridge, MA 02138 (Harvard University) and online
In partnership with the Romani Studies Program at Central European University, the Center on Forced Displacement at Boston University, the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging Committee and the Women, Gender, and Health (WGH) Concentration and Working Group at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, the Harvard University Committee on Ethnicity, Migration, Rights (EMR), the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University, the Religion, Conflict, and Peace Initiative at the Harvard Divinity School, the Palestine Program for Health and Human Rights, the International Human Rights Clinic at the Harvard Law School, and the Human Rights Program at Harvard Law School, the Roma Program for Health and Human Rights at the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights will host a free, hybrid format conference at Harvard University’s Smith Campus Center (10th Floor) on Friday, April 4, 2025. The Smith Campus Center is located at 1350 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138. It is accessible by public transportation, and near several garages, but on-site garage parking is limited. For more information, please click here. A reception will follow.
Background Information About International Roma Day (April 8):
Romani people worldwide have celebrated International Roma Day on April 8 for decades. This year will mark the 54th anniversary of the First World Roma Congress, a historic moment when Roma Day, the flag, and the anthem were adopted. Some have turned the anniversary into a one-day opportunity to discuss their rich heritage through concerts, exhibitions, film screenings, school events, conferences, and media events. Others, including activists and academics, have marked International Roma Day by organizing remembrance events to take stock of continuing racism and progress in social, political, cultural, and economic fields.
Conference Overview:
Since 2013, the annual Roma conference at Harvard University has served as a forum to examine and address anti-Roma racism, its genesis, history, pillars, and manifestations worldwide. We have aimed to improve the collection of data related to the Roma people, enhance research methods, focus on action-oriented research, and revisit and inform the histories, policies, and practices concerning Roma people. Furthermore, the Harvard Roma conference has actively sought to elevate and co-center the voices and experiences of Roma people within global scholarship. It has fostered discussions on anti-racism, reparations, solidarity, and justice-oriented solutions and emphasized the importance of solidarity among historically oppressed communities.
On April 4th, 2025, we will mark International Roma Day with the 13th Roma conference at Harvard University, Unraveling injustice and power structures.
The event aims to unpack and reframe the enduring reproduction of the artificial hierarchy imposed between white Europeans and European Roma people, situating it within the broader global theoretical frameworks related to racism, casteism, racialization, and socio-cultural hierarchies and oppressions. Unraveling injustice and power structures will contribute to and expand upon ongoing global dialogues on racialization.
It will also create opportunities for new inquiries into how caste and/or racial hierarchies are upheld within educational systems beginning in childhood, in violation of several articles of the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), such as Article 2, which frames a duty to non-discrimination, Article 3, which consequently stipulates that the best interest of each child should be the primary consideration of public or private social welfare institutions, and Article 4, which calls for Convention Parties to make every effort to uphold children’s rights including economic, social, and cultural ones. These constructed hierarchies inevitably fail to preserve children’s identities (Article 8 of the CRC) and, through structural barriers, prevent them from accessing the highest attainable standard of health (Article 24) hence setting the stage for adverse impact throughout all stages of life.
Agenda
12:00pm – 12:30pm: Gathering
12:30pm: Welcoming remarks
FXB Center Director
Mary T. Bassett, MD, MPH
Mary T. Bassett, MD, MPH, is director of the François-Xavier Bagnoud (FXB) Center for Health and Human Rights and FXB Professor of the Practice of Health and Human Rights in the department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. From December 1, 2021 to December 31, 2022 Dr. Bassett was on leave from Harvard and served as New York State’s Health Commissioner. With more than 30 years of experience devoted to promoting health equity and social justice, both in the United States and abroad, Dr. Bassett’s career has spanned academia, government, and not-for-profit work.
FXB Center Executive Director
Jehane Sedky
Jehane Sedky is a seasoned senior executive with an excellent record in leadership roles, providing strategic guidance and support to influential leaders such as former US President Bill Clinton, former UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy and the late Harvard University Professor Dr. Paul Farmer. Her expertise spans a wide spectrum of responsibilities, including leading major initiatives, strategic program development for social impact, fundraising, media, and communications.
12:40pm: Framing the conference topics
Maria Atanasova, MPS
Maria Atanasova is a Romani activist and scholar from Bulgaria, dedicated to advancing Roma rights and fostering systemic change. Drawing from her extensive activist experience, Maria has devoted her academic and professional pursuits to tackling social injustices and empowering marginalized communities. Her work encompasses critical areas such as human rights, anti-Roma racism, identity politics, and the memorialization of Roma persecutions and atrocities. Recognized for her commitment and impact, Maria was honored as the “Young European of the Year” in 2020 by the Schwarzkopf Foundation Young Europe.
12:45pm: Keynote panel – How human hierarchies normalize oppressions
Keynote Speaker
Suraj Milind Yengde, PhD
Dr. Suraj Yengde (सुरज एंगडे) is the author of the forthcoming, Caste A Global Story. His prior publications are a bestseller, Caste Matters (2019) and a co-editor of the award-winning anthology, The Radical in Ambedkar: Critical Reflections (2018). Caste Matters was listed as the “Best Non-fiction Book of the Decade” by The Hindu. The book’s Malayalam translation won the Kerala state award for translation. The book has been translated into Tamil, Hindi, Marathi, and Malayalam, with four more translations in progress.
He has written nearly 200 articles in academic and non-academic journals. His articles have appeared in Public Culture, Ethnic & Racial Studies, Diaspora Studies, History of the Present, Current Sociology, Economic & Political Weekly, The Caravan, Seminar, among others.
He is an incoming Ford Foundation Presidential Fellow.
He has written nearly 200 articles in academic and non-academic journals. His articles have appeared in Public Culture, Ethnic & Racial Studies, Diaspora Studies, History of the Present, Current Sociology, Economic & Political Weekly, The Caravan, Seminar, among others.
He is an incoming Ford Foundation Presidential Fellow.
Panel Chair and Discussant
Ioanida Costache, PhD
Ioanida Costache is an assistant professor of ethnomusicology, and, by courtsey, Anthropology, at Stanford University. She is also an affiliate of the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity.
Her work explores the legacies of Romani historical trauma, and the feminist critiques of the present, inscribed in Romani music, sound, and art. Her writing has been published in EuropeNow, RevistaARTA, Critical Romani Studies, and is forthcoming in European History Quarterly. Her research has been supported by two Fulbright Grants and the Council of European Studies. She has held visiting and postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Pennsylvania, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and the USC Shoah Foundation.
Her book project, Hearing Romani-ness, examines how music structures the political and social belonging of Romani peoples in ways that reify and work against processes of identity formation and racialization. Through an ethnographic focus on Romani musicians, the project shows how intergenerational memory of Romani trauma is discreetly imbedded in sonic expressions of sorrow within a bounded repertoire that in being kept private served as a vehicle for Romani collective healing. The book puts forth a new framework for navigating how sound, when heard as affective expression, can be used for reparative purposes in the wake of persecution, while also offering an interpretive and analytic vocabulary for learning to listen for the Roma.
Her work explores the legacies of Romani historical trauma, and the feminist critiques of the present, inscribed in Romani music, sound, and art. Her writing has been published in EuropeNow, RevistaARTA, Critical Romani Studies, and is forthcoming in European History Quarterly. Her research has been supported by two Fulbright Grants and the Council of European Studies. She has held visiting and postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Pennsylvania, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and the USC Shoah Foundation.
Her book project, Hearing Romani-ness, examines how music structures the political and social belonging of Romani peoples in ways that reify and work against processes of identity formation and racialization. Through an ethnographic focus on Romani musicians, the project shows how intergenerational memory of Romani trauma is discreetly imbedded in sonic expressions of sorrow within a bounded repertoire that in being kept private served as a vehicle for Romani collective healing. The book puts forth a new framework for navigating how sound, when heard as affective expression, can be used for reparative purposes in the wake of persecution, while also offering an interpretive and analytic vocabulary for learning to listen for the Roma.
1:45pm: Panel 1 – Race, caste, ethnicity, and other constructs of power
FXB Director of Research | Panel Chair
Jacqueline Bhabha
Jacqueline Bhabha is a Professor of the Practice of Health and Human Rights at the Harvard T.H.Chan School of Public Health, the Jeremiah Smith Jr. Lecturer in Law at Harvard Law School, and an Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. She is also the Director of Research at the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University.
Co-director, FXB Palestine Program for Health & Human Rights | Panelist
Osama Tanous, MD, MPH
Dr. Osama Tanous is a pediatrician and public health scholar based in Haifa. Osama is a co-director of the Palestine Program for Health and Human Rights and a commissioner in the O’Neill Lancet commission on Racism, Structural Discrimination and Global Health. He was a 2020-2021 Hubert H. Humphrey fellow of public health and health policy at the Rollin School of Public Health, Emory University, Atlanta, a board member of Physicians for Human Rights – Israel and B’tselem, The Israeli information center for human rights in the occupied territories. Osama’s writings and work focus on the intersection of settler colonialism, state structural violence, and health. He is examining how these factors shape the living conditions, behaviors, and thus the health of Palestinians. His work has been published in a variety of academic and non-academic journals.
Panelist
Angéla Kóczé, PhD
Angéla Kóczé is a sociologist and Assistant Professor at Central European University in Budapest and Vienna. She has published several peer-reviewed articles and book chapters with various international presses, including Palgrave Macmillan, Ashgate, Routledge and CEU Press, as well as several thematic policy papers related to social inclusion, gender equality, social justice and civil society. In 2013, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC, honoured Kóczé with the Ion Ratiu Democracy Award for her interdisciplinary research approach, which combines community engagement and policymaking with in-depth participatory research on the situation of the Roma. In 2023, the Bard Center for the Study of Hate (BCSH), named Kóczé as the winner of the 2023 Beth Rickey Award. The award is a recognition of her scholarships that has problematize anti-Roma racism and racialization and racial oppression against Roma. She is an editor and co-editor of several volumes, including The Romani Women’s Movement: Struggles and Debates in Central and Eastern Europe (Routledge, 2019, with Violetta Zentai, Jelena Jovanović and Enikő Vincze) and The Roma and their Struggle for Identity in Contemporary Europe (Oxford: Berghahn, 2020, with Huub van Baar).
FXB Affiliate | Panelist
Nile Nair, PhD, MSc
Dr. Nile Nair is an international postdoctoral research fellow from Fiji in the Nutrition and Global Health Program at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Trained as a clinical geneticist and surgical researcher, his clinical research has primarily focused on maternal-fetal health and diet clinical trials, genetics of inflammatory bowel disease, microbiome interactions with disease, and novel biomarkers of chronic diseases.
Nile earned his PhD at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Population Health Sciences, focusing on climate change, planetary, and human health. His work at Harvard involves studying the effects of climate change and the accelerated nutrition transition on indigenous populations through the lens of dietary colonialism and the disproportionate impacts of climate change on minoritized populations. His research also examines the nexus of climate justice, human nutrition, and planetary health, advocating for more sustainable dietary guidelines to reduce the greenhouse impact of global food systems. Part of his work also involves addressing the structural violence embodied in the current climate crisis and its effects on minority groups in the US and around the world.
Nile earned his PhD at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Population Health Sciences, focusing on climate change, planetary, and human health. His work at Harvard involves studying the effects of climate change and the accelerated nutrition transition on indigenous populations through the lens of dietary colonialism and the disproportionate impacts of climate change on minoritized populations. His research also examines the nexus of climate justice, human nutrition, and planetary health, advocating for more sustainable dietary guidelines to reduce the greenhouse impact of global food systems. Part of his work also involves addressing the structural violence embodied in the current climate crisis and its effects on minority groups in the US and around the world.
FXB Research Scientist | Panelist
Brittney Francis, PhD, MPH
Dr. Brittney Francis (she/her) is a social epidemiologist whose research explores how various interpersonal, institutional and systemic factors (i.e. structural racism, capitalism, cisheteronormativity, etc.) impact the development, diagnosis, and management of maternal hypertension for Black women globally, one of the leading causes of maternal morbidity and mortality worldwide. Policy and advocacy is a central component of her work in an effort to address what mechanisms can be used to shift power structures and to create more equitable distribution of resources and opportunities
Panelist
Gracyelle Costa Ferreira, PhD
Gracyelle Costa Ferreira is a Professor in the Department of Social Policy at the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) who holds postdoctoral, doctoral, and master’s degrees in Social Work. Dr. Ferreira was a visiting researcher at Harvard University’s Afro-Latin American Research Institute (ALARI) at the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research (2022–2023). She was the winner of the 2021 Capes Thesis Award for the best dissertation in Social Work in Brazil. Dr. Ferreira’s research focuses on race, nation, eugenics, racism, and social policies in Brazil, with a current emphasis on the far right and its impact on public social policies.
Co-director, FXB Palestine Program for Health & Human Rights | Panel Discussant
Bram Peter Wispelwey, MD, MPH,
Dr. Bram Wispelwey is co-director of the Palestine Program for Health and Human Rights at the Harvard FXB Center, and a co-founder of Health for Palestine, a community organizing initiative in Palestinian refugee camps. He is an Associate Physician in the Division of Global Health Equity at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, an Instructor in Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and an Instructor in the Department of Global Health and Population at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Bram’s research, education, and implementation efforts focus on antiracism strategies to address hospital inequities, community health worker impact in Palestinian refugee camps, and the settler colonial determinants of health. Before the start of his medical career, he pursued LGBTQ-rights activism, which informs his health approach at the bedside and in advocacy. Bram is a Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Fellows for Health Equity and a 2023 awardee of the Brigham and Women’s Nesson Fellowship for Boston-based community health work.
3:45pm – 4:00pm: Coffee break
4:00pm: Panel 2 – Distinct and interconnected mechanisms of oppression
Panel Chair
Delia Popescu, PhD
Dr. Delia Popescu is Professor of Political Science at Le Moyne College, in Syracuse, NY. She holds the Georg Endowed Professorship at Le Moyne College (2021-2024), and she is also Director of the Peace and Global Studies and of the Legal Studies programs. Popescu is an applied political theorist with broad interests across social movement theory, deliberative democracy, resistance, totalitarianism, critical discourse analysis, memory construction, and dissident work in Eastern Europe. She is author of Political Action in Vaclav Havel’s Thought: The Responsibility of Resistance (Lexington Press, 2011). Popescu published work related to rhetorical constructions and institutional marginalization, nation branding and minority power relations, the Roma minority across Europe, and the construction of democratic deliberation. Her current work focuses on comparative political theory and the conceptualization of East European political thought, which resulted in a chapter on “Eastern European Political Thought as a Conceptual Tool” in the Oxford Handbook of Comparative Political Theory. She is currently writing a contribution on Soviet Communism for the Cambridge Dictionary on Political Thought, an article on political elites in post-communist Romania, and another article on the Roma minority in Secret Police files in Romania.
Panelist
Dezso Mate, PhD
Dezso Mate obtained his Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Sociology at the Eotvos Lorand University. Currently, he is a research fellow at the Universitat Flensburg at the Interdisciplinary Centre for European Studies and a visiting researcher at the Heidelberg University at the Research Centre on Antigypsyism, Department of History. Dr. Mate is also a Barvalipe Academy (Knowledge Production, Research, and Publication) member at the European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture—ERIAC, and a visiting lecturer at Södertörn University’s Critical Romani Studies Department in Stockholm. He is an Alumnus of the Kulturwissenschaftliches Institut (KWI) in Essen. Dr. Mate previously held positions as a Research Fellow and Course Leader at the Central European University – Romani Studies Program in Budapest. He also served as a Visiting Research Associate at the University of Sussex – Centre for Higher Education and Equity Research from 2015 to 2017. Between 2013 and 2018, he contributed as a Junior Research Fellow at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences – Institute for Minority Studies. His research interests encompass dimensions of intersectional and academic antigypsyism, structural racism, social movements, and resilience. His dissertation focused on academic antigypsyism with a social-psychological analysis of resilience.
Panelist
Thanh Mai Bercher
Thanh Mai Bercher is an experienced Research Assistant with a demonstrated history of working in the law and public health industry. Skilled in Nonprofit Organizations, Human Rights Research, Community Organizing Work, and Leadership. Strong research professional with a Bachelor of Arts (BA) in Public Health from the University of California, Berkeley. Actively connected to the UC Berkeley Law’s Human Rights Center and UC San Diegos Health Frontiers in Tijuana medical clinic. Broad interests in women’s health, sexual violence, mental health services and policy, LGBTQ+ rights, and refugee rights.
FXB Palestine Health and Human Rights Postdoctoral Fellow | Panelist
Rania Muhareb, PhD, LLM
Rania Muhareb is the 2025 Palestine Health and Human Rights Postdoctoral Fellow at the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University. Her research focuses on the right to health in Palestine in the context of apartheid, settler colonialism, and genocide. She recently completed her PhD at the Irish Centre for Human Rights in the School of Law at the University of Galway (2020-2024). Funded by the Irish Research Council and Hardiman PhD scholarship, her doctoral research examined the mobilisation of the apartheid framework by grassroots organisers and human rights organisations in the pursuit of international justice and accountability in Palestine. Prior to this, she worked as a legal researcher and advocacy officer with the leading Palestinian human rights organisation Al-Haq (2017-2020).
Rania is a policy member of Al-Shabaka – the Palestinian Policy Network, a member of Al-Shabaka’s editorial committee, and has a decade of experience in human rights, legal research, and advocacy in Palestine. She holds an LLM in International Human Rights and Humanitarian Law (2016) from the European University Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder) and a BA from Sciences Po Paris’s Middle East and Mediterranean campus in Menton (2014). She has authored and co-authored numerous articles and reports, including in Health and Human Rights, Statelessness and Citizenship Review, República y Derecho, Middle East Policy, The Lancet, BMJ, and the Institute for Palestine Studies, in addition to legal blogs and media articles. She has presented her research at academic conferences, workshops, seminars, and in guest lectures mainly focusing on apartheid and international law in Palestine.
Rania is a policy member of Al-Shabaka – the Palestinian Policy Network, a member of Al-Shabaka’s editorial committee, and has a decade of experience in human rights, legal research, and advocacy in Palestine. She holds an LLM in International Human Rights and Humanitarian Law (2016) from the European University Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder) and a BA from Sciences Po Paris’s Middle East and Mediterranean campus in Menton (2014). She has authored and co-authored numerous articles and reports, including in Health and Human Rights, Statelessness and Citizenship Review, República y Derecho, Middle East Policy, The Lancet, BMJ, and the Institute for Palestine Studies, in addition to legal blogs and media articles. She has presented her research at academic conferences, workshops, seminars, and in guest lectures mainly focusing on apartheid and international law in Palestine.
Panelist
Lalit Khandare, PhD, MSW, MPhil
Lalit Khandare received his PhD in Social Work from Indiana University in 2017 and his MA in Social Work from Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai, India in 2003. His work focuses on domestic violence, global social work, and human rights. He currently teaches Research Methods and Thesis, Program Evaluation, and Beyond the Cycle of Violence in the MSW program.
5:30pm: Book talk
Director of the FXB Center Roma Program for Health and Human Rights | Panelist
Margareta Matache, PhD
Dr. Margareta (Magda) Matache is a Lecturer on Social and Behavioral Sciences at the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and the co-founder and Director of the Roma Program at the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights, Harvard University. She is also a member of the O’Neill-Lancet Commission on Racism, Structural Discrimination and Global Health.
Dr. Matache’s research focuses on the manifestations and impacts of racism and other systems of oppression in different geographical and political contexts. Her research examines discrimination, reparations, social determinants of health—including education and social and economic disparities—and their nexus with the historical past and contemporary public policies, with a particular focus on anti-Roma racism. In 2017, she co-edited Realizing Roma Rights, an investigation of anti-Roma racism in Europe, in collaboration with Jacqueline Bhabha, Professor of the Practice of Health and Human Rights at the Harvard Chan School, and Andrzej Mirga, former Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE)/Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) Senior Adviser on Roma and Sinti Issues and chief of the ODIHR Contact Point for Roma and Sinti Issues. Dr. Matache is also the co-editor of Time for Reparations, a 2021 volume exploring the issue of reparations across a broad range of historical and geographic contexts and academic disciplines, along with Jacqueline Bhabha and Caroline Elkins, Professor of History and African and African American Studies at Harvard University.
Dr. Matache’s research focuses on the manifestations and impacts of racism and other systems of oppression in different geographical and political contexts. Her research examines discrimination, reparations, social determinants of health—including education and social and economic disparities—and their nexus with the historical past and contemporary public policies, with a particular focus on anti-Roma racism. In 2017, she co-edited Realizing Roma Rights, an investigation of anti-Roma racism in Europe, in collaboration with Jacqueline Bhabha, Professor of the Practice of Health and Human Rights at the Harvard Chan School, and Andrzej Mirga, former Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE)/Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) Senior Adviser on Roma and Sinti Issues and chief of the ODIHR Contact Point for Roma and Sinti Issues. Dr. Matache is also the co-editor of Time for Reparations, a 2021 volume exploring the issue of reparations across a broad range of historical and geographic contexts and academic disciplines, along with Jacqueline Bhabha and Caroline Elkins, Professor of History and African and African American Studies at Harvard University.
Panelist
Dezso Mate, PhD
Dezso Mate obtained his Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Sociology at the Eotvos Lorand University. Currently, he is a research fellow at the Universitat Flensburg at the Interdisciplinary Centre for European Studies and a visiting researcher at the Heidelberg University at the Research Centre on Antigypsyism, Department of History. Dr. Mate is also a Barvalipe Academy (Knowledge Production, Research, and Publication) member at the European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture—ERIAC, and a visiting lecturer at Södertörn University’s Critical Romani Studies Department in Stockholm. He is an Alumnus of the Kulturwissenschaftliches Institut (KWI) in Essen. Dr. Mate previously held positions as a Research Fellow and Course Leader at the Central European University – Romani Studies Program in Budapest. He also served as a Visiting Research Associate at the University of Sussex – Centre for Higher Education and Equity Research from 2015 to 2017. Between 2013 and 2018, he contributed as a Junior Research Fellow at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences – Institute for Minority Studies. His research interests encompass dimensions of intersectional and academic antigypsyism, structural racism, social movements, and resilience. His dissertation focused on academic antigypsyism with a social-psychological analysis of resilience.
Panelist
Elana Resnick, PhD
Dr. Resnick’s research interests include environmental justice, materiality, waste management, racialization, nuclear energy, informal economies, urban infrastructure, postsocialism, EU integration, the Romani diaspora, and humor. Based on over three consecutive years of fieldwork in Bulgaria conducted on city streets, in landfills, Roma neighborhoods, executive offices, and at the Ministry of the Environment, her book manuscript examines the juncture of material waste management and racialization, specifically highlighting the intersection between physical garbage and the Roma minority, often considered “social trash” throughout Europe.
6:15pm: Reception
Please direct any questions about this event to Claire Street at cstreet@hsph.harvard.edu.
Speakers’ remarks are based on their own scholarship and experience. As such, they speak for themselves, not for Harvard University.