The overarching goal of the Series is to incorporate the history and culture of Roma into the
mainstream of European and global academia. To achieve this goal the series Roma History and
Culture publishes books (monographs edited volumes and collections of historical sources)
from wide range of disciplines - history ethnography anthropology sociology political
science religion cultural studies literature studies film and art history with particular
focus on comparative studies - that offer innovative critical and above all reliable and
fully documented insights into Roma history and culture that relies on documents critical
rereading and rethinking of historical sources and existing research. This approach marks a
critical turn in the academic studies of Roma history and culture that in the past all too
often were blighted by stereotypes and myths especially the specious belief that there are not
enough preserved written sources on the Roma past to allow for the emergence of Roma history as
a field in its own right. The series thus shifts and challenges prevailing academic
narratives that Roma are nothing else but a detached marginalised community and a passive
object of different state governments' policies by presenting analysing and contextualising
the agency of Roma as actors in their own right with their own views and visions of the
development for the Roma and their communities. In this way the volumes published in the Roma
book series present and contribute to the incorporation of the Roma past and present into the
mainstream of European and global historiography instead of confining Roma history and culture
to some narrow ethnic box. Research work on the Roma from Central Eastern and Southeastern
Europe constitutes the very academic focus of the proposed Book Series which aspires to also
cover the past and cultures of other communities that have historically been known under the
general label "Gypsies" such as the Sinti Manush Kale Romanichals Irish and Scottish
Travelers etc.
