The second meeting of the Research Group was held at the Open Society Foundation on Friday 20th April. The attendance was not as good as the first meeting, which may have been due to belated reminder emails.
Brian Foster had produced first draft of a proposal for research around the alarmingly high level of Irish Traveller and Gypsy Roma exclusions. The draft had been discussed and broadly supported by the Roma Support Group; they suggested that Roma were more likely to self-exclude, and this could be incorporated into the proposal. The next step would be to break the proposal down into operational components to identify potential researchers, funders and partners. One possibility would be the development of a research cluster around the university of Greenwich.
Another potential cluster appears to be developing around Dr John Coxhead at the University of Derby, possibly focusing on criminology, policing and the law.
There was a discussion about the focuses of activity, local, national and international with the feeling that the European framework for Roma integration, the proposals of the ministerial working group, and the work of Open Society Foundation may all generate research topics.
