Roma Women Speak Up: joy in a hostile environment

Recording from webinar on 8 December 2022

René Cassin is hosting a one-hour webinar with two wonderful Roma women to mark the 16 days of action on Violence against Women and for human rights week. This webinar will explore, amplify and celebrate Roma and Sinti women, as well as gaining insight into their experiences in the UK’s current hostile environment to migration.

We are lucky enough to be joined by two accomplished Roma activists, Rosamaria Cisneros and Yassmin Vilcekova, to be hosted by academic and Jewish activist Prof. Margaret Greenfields.

More about our speakers

• Yassmin Vilcekova is a grassroots Roma woman from Slovakia, living in the UK for the last 10 years. She is an official Interpreter and Translator as well as an active Roma Advocate and Activist. Passionate about social justice, and empowering vulnerable Roma families, she works for several agencies and is highly active in her community. She participates in various community projects, often designed to help women to gain an autonomy. She is also passionate about helping survivors of modern slavery and human trafficking.
• Rosamaria Cisneros (USA-Spain-UK) is a researcher, dancer, choreographer, sociologist and filmmaker at Coventry University’s C-DaRE. She works closely with the European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture (ERIAC), NGOs and the RomArchive. Her film company has produced films for the NHS, Save the Children Foundation, Migration Matters festival among others. Cisneros has led EU-funded projects making education and arts accessible to vulnerable groups. Her interdisciplinary projects focus on the intersection of cultural heritage, dance, site, and digital technologies. Her screendance films have been shown globally. She also is a Roma and education consultant and works across political, academic, artistic, community and artistic communities.
• Professor Margaret Greenfields is a lawyer and academic with a focus on Travellers’ experiences of the legal system in relation to family law/social work interventions. She has worked extensively in the field of social inclusion, ethnicity, equalities and social justice with a specific emphasis on undertaking collaborative research with communities at risk of marginalisation, racism and ‘othering’. She has worked closely with Gypsy, Traveller and more recently migrant Roma (GTR) communities for over 25 years. In recent years she has undertaken participatory action research programmes with vulnerable migrants; live-aboard Boaters; LGBT+ members of faith communities and homeless people experiencing poor health as well as refugee and asylum-seeking women.

Free webinar – book your place via our Eventbrite page