General Meeting of the Research Center in Multiculturalism and Plurilingualism (2025)
Rannsóknarstofan í fjölmenningar- og fjöltyngisfræðum býður öllum á aðalfund og gestafyrirlestur Dr. Sofiyu Zahovu forstöðumanns Vigdísarstofnunar alþjóðlegrar miðstöðvar tungumála og menningar. Öllum er velkomið að mæta sem hafa áhuga!
20. ágúst 2025
15:00 - 17:00
Staðsetning verður auglýst þegar nær dregur
Dagskrá
15:00 - 15:30 Aðalfundur – General Meeting.
15:30 - 16:30 Fyrirlestur Dr. Sofiyu Zahovu forstöðumanns Vigdísarstofnunar alþjóðlegrar miðstöðvar tungumála og menningar – Guest lecture by Dr. Sofiya Zahova. Director of the Vigdís International Centre for Multilingualism and Intercultural Understanding.
16:30 - 17:00 Te, kaffi og spjall.
Guest Lecture by Dr. Sofiya Zahova – Linguicism and sustained multilingual practices: What can we learn from the Romani community?
Roma (a community with diverse self-denominations, historically referred to as “Gypsies”) are the largest European minority, present in all countries, including Iceland. Romani individuals and communities have historically been multilingual and have navigated multiple linguistic environments across generations. Past and present experiences of the Roma are related to oppression and institutional practices aimed at erasing Romani identity and Romani language use. In recent decades, with the rise of minority rights discourse and the recognition of Roma as a minority or ethnic group in some countries, there are practices and policies that support education in the Romani language, production of Romani language materials, and training of Romani teachers.
The first part of the talk will offer a short historical overview of the century-long policies of oppressing the Romani language, which led to language loss and identity mimicry among some communities. Others, however, have maintained the Romani language in the private domain despite institutional practices shaped by linguicism and antigypsyism. In the second part, we will discuss the increasing use of Romani in the public domain and the institutional practices of teaching the Romani language and pedagogical approaches to the education of Romani children, with a focus on the Nordic context. Finally, we will discuss perspectives on multilingual education and education in the Romani language among several Romani communities I have worked with during my research. We will explore in more detail the experiences of the Romanian Roma community currently based in the Reykjavík capital area.
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