3 year Research Funding Awarded to Eve Rosenhaft and Tamara West

Posted on: 18 November 2021 by Eve Rosenhaft in 2021 posts

A postcard that circulated in 1906 (courtesy of University of Liverpool Special Collections)

Eve and Tamara receive funding for three years to develop and expand their study, with a project entitled Romani Migration between Germany and Britain (1880s-1914): Spaces of Informal Business, Media Spectacle, and Racial Policing.

As part of a project on the Romani contribution to Europe’s public spaces supported by the Humanities in the European Research Area (HERA), Eve Rosenhaft and Tamara West began a study of what was known at the time as the ‘Germany Gypsy invasion’ of Britain. In 1906 a substantial number of German Sinti and Roma, perhaps as many as 200, travelled in groups to English and Scottish ports. They spent most of the year journeying around the country, performing and trading in horses and pursued by the police and the press, until they were deported back to Germany in November of the year. The initial research that Eve and Tamara did made clear that that episode provided a wealth of information on and insights into Romani life in Germany and Britain, the power and functions of the print media, and the ways in which cross-channel conversations between the German and British authorities shaped patterns of racialised policing and migration control.

Eve and Tamara have now received funding for three years to develop and expand their study, with a project entitled Romani Migration between Germany and Britain (1880s-1914): Spaces of Informal Business, Media Spectacle, and Racial Policing. The support comes from a joint initiative of the AHRC and the German Research Agency (DFG), and they will be collaborating with Dr Felix Brahm from the University of Bielefeld, whose expertise in imperial history will help to make links between structures of institutional racism at home and in the colonies in both Germany and Britain. In addition to carrying out intensive fieldwork to trace people’s movements and explore their motivations and experiences, the team will devise an interactive map, and this will be done in collaboration with partners from the Romani and Traveller communities in both countries.

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