The European Educational Research Association: people, practices and policy over the last 20 years

From a pragmatic point of view, it is the people who make an organisation, but organisations are both people and structures, and not least organisations develop culture. One of the significant features of the European Educational Research Association (EERA) as an organisation is that many of its activities are run by people on a voluntary basis. Apart from a small office, now in Berlin, which oversees and handles the everyday management, participation on Council, reviewing and programming for ECER (European Conference on Educational Research), managing networks, etc. are all undertaken as voluntary work by academics from across Europe (and beyond). From the large group of people who are currently sustaining these activities, many have participated from the beginning, but many others, after having been once at the conference, returned and got engaged in the work, for instance within one of the networks. Among the many who participate in EERA activities, there is a diversity of reasons for doing so, but there seems to be something which is recurring in what people say about why they do it. One of these recurring ideas is that the discursive norms of the organisation are enforced in the context of welcoming people and ideas, and second, there exists an intellectual generosity and egalitarianism which encourages newcomers to participate rather than protect themselves. We believe that this tells something about what EERA and ECER are about.

The institutional concealment of the Romanies’ culture: the ongoing legacy of Fascist Italy

This paper presents the case of the Romanies in Italy and the ‘forgotten’ nature of their genocide. The crimes committed by the Fascist regime towards these peoples during the Second World War were not disclosed until recently. In past decades it was commonly believed that Fascism had targeted Romanies merely as a problem of ‘public order’, rather than as a racial issue. This study argues that a lack of official acknowledgement, together with recent authoritarian approaches towards them (such as the introduction of 2008 ‘Nomad Emergency’ and the ongoing adoption of the highly criticized ‘camps policy’), could all be interpreted as an indirect consequence of the government's incapacity to deal with a shameful past and its unbroken ties. The existence of ‘gaps’ in Italian collective memory is now harming the health of Italy's democratic polity, allowing racism to re-emerge, while resuscitating a deep-seated belief in the ‘legendary generosity’ of Italians.

El género y su articulación con la vivencia de los derechos humanos para la democracia y la paz

ResumenEste artículo pretende vincular el género con la vivencia de los derechos humanos para la democracia y la paz. Además, señala que educar en derechos humanos y género implica lavivencia de valores que permitan la convivencia positiva y pacífica entre todos y todas a partir de la solidaridad, el respeto mutuo, el trato equitativo, la empatía, la igualdad, la generosidad y la aceptación.Palabras clave: género, paz, democracia, derechos humanos, currículum. AbstractThis article aims to link gender with the experience of human rights for democracy and peace. It also notes that human rights education and gender involves the experience of values that allow positive and peaceful coexistence among everyone from the solidarity, mutual respect, equal treatment, empathy, equality, generosity and acceptance.Keywords: gender, peace, democracy, human rights, curriculum.