Our Research

The Blinken OSA Archivum Research Unit is a creative archival laboratory which centers on the issues of academic and public knowledge production with special focus on epistemologies of truth-seeking, social justice, issues of archival credibility, access, and data protection. The Archivum is a repository of a large Cold War media archive and also holds collections on human rights violations, uncensored speech, and samizdat materials. Researchers at Archivum actively engage with documents in the archival collections as primary sources and with the history of collections within the evolving archival ecology. We research archival infrastructures and processes, as well as production and circulation of these collections through the lens of archival concepts. Archivum research seminars bring together in-house and associated fellows and staff to discuss archival findings along with interpretative frameworks and self-reflexive methodologies, especially pertinent at the times of the changing role and status of archives after the digital turn and in the era of “post-truth.” 

Our activities include academic seminars and collaborative, interdisciplinary research projects. Research fellows at the Blinken OSA Archivum combine expertise in history of East-Central Europe and the former Soviet countries, archival studies, political science, cultural heritage, and information science. The Archivum’s researchers are also members of the CEU faculty who offer BA, MA, and PhD-level courses and contribute to specialized internships at the Archivum in Budapest. Courses at the CEU Vienna campus are offered at the Department of Historical Studies, the Department of Legal Studies, and at the Advanced Certificate Programs in Cultural Heritage Studies and Visual Theory and Practice. Further academic programs are organized in cooperation with CEU Institute for Advanced Studies (CEU IAS), CEU Democracy Institute (DI), and other research and academic institutions in Budapest and internationally.  

The Research Unit contributes to the Blinken OSA Archivum in-house archival and public programs, as well as to the archival collection development, helping to preserve unique and endangered collections and make them accessible in a sustainable way. Participatory archival and curatorial projects, involving inclusive workflow and metadata design also benefit from constant information exchange between researchers and archivists. Research at the Archivum nourishes curated collections, exhibitions at Galeria Centralis, Verzio IHRDFF program, as well as other public programs. 

The Archivum is a hub for researchers and archival professionals from around the world, working on the archival epistemologies of the Cold War and its aftermath, critical archiving for human rights and social justice, entangled and contested historical narratives, researching archiving and preservation practices of ephemeral, multi-media and forensic archives, memory studies, institutional and intellectual history in Eastern Europe, and theoretical and practical aspects of public history. To engage external researchers, the Archivum hosts the Visegrad Scholarship at OSA program. This program is supported by the International Visegrad Fund and is designed to foster cooperation with historians, cultural heritage professionals, and artists along the yearly announced themes. The Archivum's Research Unit actively participates in designing the annual program call, mentoring and working together with the fellows, and maintaining an online community of over 200 researchers.

Our research builds on long traditions of open access, collaborative research, and sharing knowledge. Research collaborations aim to develop and sustain a broad, trans-sectoral international network. Our collaboration with other heritage institutions and partner archives builds on the inclusive accessibility of collections. The results are made accessible to professionals and the broader public and are shared widely in the form of publications, public debates, teaching, and other activities.

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Research streams

Archival epistemologies

This stream explores theories and methodologies related to the archival collections created during the Cold War and in its aftermath, focusing primarily on the core OSA collection, the archive of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. It addresses questions of information circulation in contexts of crisis, credibility of archival sources, the role of the archivists, the relationship of supranational, national, and institutional archives, and epistemic issues of truth-telling in the Cold War period. We approach research with and through archives from a self-reflexive perspective to analyze the strategies of collection development and the relevance of the records created in a bipolar world. We also revise notions of “propaganda” and “counter-propaganda” during the Cold War through concepts inspired by histories of knowledge-production.

For more information contact: Ioana Macrea-Toma

Samizdat and dissent

Blinken OSA Archivum has a significant collection of uncensored speech and dissident samizdat texts. From the late 1960s to the early 1990s, Radio Liberty had a dedicated Samizdat Unit, which compiled a vast archive documenting the history of the human rights movement and violations in the USSR during the second half of the 20th century. Research into this collection requires a comprehensive examination of both its content and its archival structure. This research stream engages also with other Archivum's samizdat documents including those in the personal archives of the oppositional figures in Eastern Europe. It explores the networks of production and circulation of alternative information as well as the mechanisms of censorship and dissent in socialist Eastern Europe in a comparative perspective.

For more information contact: András Mink, Katerina Belenkina

The history of the concept of human rights

This stream addresses questions of human rights before and after the fall of communist regimes. Only about forty years ago the idea of human rights seemed to be a universal, all-embracing, unifying set of political ideas for all the anti-regime political streams from the radical left to the conservative right. Nowadays, it emerges as one of the most divisive and polarizing issues in the political arena. Researching Archivum’s collections contributes to understanding this unexpected turn and its global impact.

For more information contact: Csaba Szilágyi, András Mink

Audiovisual media archives

This research stream focuses on how individual, national, and supra-national actors of memory politics in Eastern Europe (re-)use audio-visual materials to create and promote various historical narratives. Encompassing both official state output and amateur film and photography of the socialist period, it investigates images’ semantic mobility and shape-shifting and studies how their functions change when transferred from original production and distribution contexts to an archival ecosystem. The ongoing repurposing of visual materials, including those of private origin, subverts and expands their period meanings and amplifies their affective capacity. Through a combination of synthetic analysis and case studies, this stream also explores image reception and communities of affect.

For more information contact: Oksana Sarkisova

Opinion surveys in East-Central Europe

This stream expands Archivum’s thematic collections of surveys of social and political attitudes and engages with the comparative study of voting behavior, political attitude formation, and political communication. Of special interest here are the development of political engagement and democratic culture in the region in the post-communist period, the impact of discursive practices on attitudes toward the socially disadvantaged groups the contributions of political opinion surveys to the democratic process, research into how media and political communications allow necessarily poorly informed citizens to make informed choices in election, and conceptual and empirical distinctions between civil versus uncivil forms of partisanship.

For more information contact: Gábor Tóka

Access to archives and privacy

This area of research explores practical questions of access and privacy. It draws on expert interviews conducted as part of the 2024 pan-European study on access to archives led by Iván Székely under the auspices of the Council of Europe, which assessed not only the situation in individual countries and archives, but also the problems that act as barriers to access in Europe and elsewhere. Research on free access also considers the moral and legal restrictions that apply to the accessibility of personal data contained in the documents. There is a significant difference between data concerning victims or perpetrators and data concerning private individuals or people performing a public function. Access and privacy are two fundamental rights, the enforcement of which is a priority issue for all archives.

For more information contact: Iván Székely