Destigmatizing the Roma: The Most Forgotten Community in Lithuania

Baltic Ways

Baltic Ways presents a bonus episode from our partners at the EUROPAST Podcast. The EUROPAST Podcast explores Europe's most pressing challenges of public history, investigating the complex and contested spaces of public memory, memory activism and best practices for engaging the public in a dialogue about the past.

In this episode of the EUROPAST Podcast, project researcher Rūta Vyšniauskaitė sat down with Agnieška Avin, a PhD candidate at the Institute of Sociology at the Lithuanian Centre for Social Sciences. Avin is also an activist for Roma integration, working as an educator at the integrative children’s day-care center “Padėk Pritapti.”

The episode focuses on Agnieška's engagement in social sciences and interest in the Roma community in Lithuania, their linguistic diversity, and cultural history. It also touches upon the positive developments in the integration of the Roma community in Lithuania as well as the enduring challenges that this community faces, such as society's prejudice and distrust, lack of awareness about the Roma community, and misinformation.

The EUROPAST podcast series is part of a project that has received funding from the European Union under the WIDERA programme (EUROPAST project, Grant Agreement No. 101079466). Learn more about the project: www.europast.vu.lt

Baltic Ways is a podcast from the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies, produced in partnership with the Baltic Initiative at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of AABS or FPRI.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit fpribalticinitiative.substack.com