Visegrad Scholarship at Blinken OSA

OSA Research Room photo by Edit Blaumann

New Visegrad Grantees begin their research at Blinken OSA

We are happy to announce that four new grantees of the Visegrad Scholarship at Blinken OSA, Zsuzsi Flohr, Ádám Farkas, Lucia Szemetová, and Péter Csunderlik have begun their research on-site, in the Research Room of Blinken OSA this September.

Zsuzsi Flohr defines herself as “a visual artist with a special interest in interdisciplinary approaches to memory studies.” Her research, Possibilities of knowing: Truth-seeking in a polarized world and [in] its aftermath is part of an arts-based project titled How I realized I was Roma, How I realized I was a Jew, which deals with the commonalities and differences in concealing, rejecting, or embracing Jewish and Roma identity by members of the Third Generation after the Shoah/Porajmos.”

Ádám Farkas’s research focuses on “the communist intelligentsia (mainly the writers) in Hungary after 1945, their way to anti-Stalinism and the Hungarian Writers’ Union’s role in the 1956 revolution, and their subsequent compromise with the Kádár regime with micro-historical approaches”. He intends to scrutinize this topic by addressing questions like “Since the intellectuals and freedom fighters had different goals in 1956, can the writers be classified as an opposition after 1953?,” or “Were they the real spiritual leaders of the revolution, did they have that influence on the society?”

Lucia Szemetová’s research plan is titled The Creative Use of the Archive During Socialism – History, Memory, and National Identity, and explores “how archives are maintained and repurposed on-screen to shape contemporary attitudes towards the nation.” The proposed research will investigate Hungarian documentary films’ “use of the archive during Socialism, to see how this period addresses its rich legacy of memories.”

Péter Csunderlik is currently writing Péter Hanák’s biography, his research at Blinken OSA will focus on the role Hanák played at the birth of CEU, “in the establishment and operation of the CEU Department of History between 1993 and 1997.” Besides studying relevant records preserved at the Archives (Hanak Péter Correspondence, publications, interviews)”, Csunderlik also intends to conduct oral history interviews with former colleagues, to bring “the figure of Péter Hanák to life as he lives in the memory of his colleagues.”

In the current pandemic situation, we accommodate only five researchers at a time in the Research Room. Reservation in advance is obligatory.

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