University of Vienna
Marietta-Blau-Saal
Main Building 
Stiege (staircase) 10, Hochparterre (HP) floor
Universitätsring 1
1010 Vienna

This public draws on the forthcoming book, Romani Women at the Edge of Neoliberal Europe: Discursive Emancipation and Structural Violence, to examine the contradictory position of Romani women in post-socialist Europe within the intersecting frameworks of racialized neoliberal capitalism, gendered exclusion, and European governance. Drawing on more than two decades of research and political engagement, it explores how Romani women have been addressed through the languages of empowerment, inclusion, and rights while continuing to experience profound structural violence, dispossession, and marginalization. Focusing on both political activism and everyday life, the lecture traces the emergence of Romani women’s agency across local and transnational contexts. It considers how Romani women have negotiated the tensions between feminist politics, Roma rights advocacy, and development agendas, while confronting the limits of liberal inclusion and the depoliticizing effects of NGO-ization. Particular attention is given to the ways in which discourses of emancipation often coexist with, and sometimes obscure, enduring racialized, gendered, and classed inequalities. By bringing Romani feminist thought into conversation with intersectionality, racial capitalism, and critiques of Europeanization, the lecture argues that Romani women’s experiences provide a crucial lens for understanding the broader contradictions of democracy, social justice, and belonging in contemporary Europe.

Angéla Kóczé is Associate Professor, Chair of Romani Studies, and Academic Director of the Roma Graduate Preparation Program at Central European University in Budapest and Vienna. Her work focuses on gendered and classed racialization, social justice, and civil society. She is the co-editor of The Romani Women’s Movement: Struggles and Debates in Central and Eastern Europe and The Roma and Their Struggle for Identity in Contemporary Europe. Her monograph, Romani Women at the Edge of Neoliberal Europe: Discursive Emancipation and Structural Violence, will be published in July 2026 by Manchester University Press.

Flyer