Mid-term conference in the PARI project in Sibiu, Romania
Mid-term conference in the PARI project in Sibiu, Romania
Five researchers from three faculties and one of the centres at VID Specialized University participated in the mid-term conference in a Romanian-Norwegian research project on religion and Roma inclusion. Read about their experiences here.
Five researchers from three faculties and one of the centres at VID Specialized University participated in the mid-term conference in a Romanian-Norwegian research project on religion and Roma inclusion. Read about their experiences here.
The research project Participatory Approach for Roma Inclusion (PARI), on Facebook, investigates the role of religion and religious actors in Roma inclusion. Financed through Norway Grants and the Romanian state budget, the project includes historical, sociological, and theological participatory research.
The project has case studies in two Romanian counties, as well as in Oslo in Norway. It has recently started activities to share experiences among actors working with Roma inclusion in Romania. The project is led by the Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu and VID Specialized University.
The mid-term conference was an opportunity for everyone engaged in the project to meet. The last time the team met was in May when most of the Romanian team came to Oslo. Also, members of the international advisory board of the project participated in the mid-term conference.
Stephanie Dietrich, Bjørn Hallstein Holte, Annette Rose Leis-Peters, Inger Marie Lid, and Tor Slettebø travelled to Sibiu and participated in the conference from VID. Carl Emil Vogt from the Norwegian Center for Holocaust and Minority Studies, who is a member of the advisory board of the PARI project, travelled with us and participated in the conference. The delegation was in Romania from 26 to 29 October.
Important perspectives and discussions
Wednesday evening, the team participated in opening an exhibition of historical documents on slavery in Romania. Many of the slaves in the regions that comprise Romania today were Roma. The exhibition featured original documents and copies of documents from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that describe slavery in different ways. The documents were translated into Romanian and English and accompanied by explanatory texts written by their Romanian colleagues as a part of the PARI project.
Vogt held a short speech about Norwegian experiences as part of the opening, which was attended by representatives from Roma communities. The exhibition was a part of the PARI project and was on display in a venue open to the public in the Astra Library in central Sibiu for a week and a half.
- Thursday morning, we visited the villages outside Sibiu where two of the case studies in the PARI project take place. The visits were important for our understanding of the work being done in the case studies in Romania, says Bjørn Hallstein Holte.
- Thursday afternoon and all-day Friday, we met for plenary and parallel sessions at the Faculty of Protestant Theology at the University of Sibiu. We were updated on the work carried out by our Romanian colleagues and brought them up to date on our research in Norway. It was valuable that we got feedback and input from the advisory board of the project. It was also important that some of the co-researchers in the project participated in the conference, Holte adds.
The co-researchers participate in the PARI project as representatives of the Romanian communities where the project conducts research and activities.
At the conference, the co-researchers listened to the preliminary results of the research and our interpretations of them, and they commented on the project as they see it so far. The project conducts investigations and activities in a complex and controversial field, and the different delegates in the project had different views on many questions.
- We discussed important questions during our days together, but we still have a lot to discuss after the conference, Holte explains.
A meeting place for Roma
Saturday morning, the team visited Father Alexandru’s church in a suburb of Sibiu. Father Alexandru is a friend of the PARI project and has converted the outhouse by his church into the Cultural Shed, Șura Culturală, also on Facebook. The shed is a meeting place for people in the parish. It is also used to offer daycare for children and help students with their homework, which is particularly important for Romani children living within the parish.
Father Alexandru is also engaged in other work that is important to Roma living in poverty in his parish, and his work is a good example of how religious actors can promote the inclusion of Roma. Unfortunately, it is not a part of any case study in the PARI project.
The mid-term conference in Sibiu took place just over a year and a half into the project. There is about a year and a half left of the project. The project team plans to continue working together and to meet again to continue developing the project together in the autumn of 2023 and the spring of 2024.
Date: 16. November 2022.