The Liverpool mapping workshop was held at the University of Liverpool on 7 October. The participants included representatives of local government, Friends, Families and Travellers (the national organisation of British Gypsies, Roma and Travellers), archivists and academics from Liverpool and Leeds universities, and members of Liverpool’s Roma community.
As in Ahlem, the event offered an opportunity for reflection on the historical context of the story and the role played by digital innovation, and also for cross-community dialogue. We shared ideas about how mapping and storytelling can help recover marginalised histories and challenge contemporary forms of anti-Romani discrimination.
Even though the ethical issues we discussed in Ahlem had a different valence with a British audience, the local setting meant that they were very present in our minds: Liverpool was the seat of the Gypsy Lore Society, and the Special Collections of the Liverpool University Library include the Society’s archives and related Romani collections – on which the RomMig project has drawn extensively. The workshop conversations drew us back to the insight that taken at face value, those sources overwhelmingly reflect the pervasive racism of the majority society. They can be read as just another depressing record of discrimination and harassment, and so we need to be alert to our own purposes and also to the needs of our audiences when we use them. This is precisely the area where cross-community dialogue is critical.
Colleagues from the Lower Saxony Association of German Sinti joined the workshop via Zoom, and reported back from the Ahlem workshop. Here the themes of ethical responsibility and cooperative research that emerged there were again emphasised. These points were also able underlined with reference to a recent development: In September, the German Federal Archives signed an agreement with the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma governing the use of the files on Romani individuals and families created by the Racial Hygiene Research Unit during the Nazi regime.