CEU’s Department of Historical Studies on Field Trip at the Archivum

32 current students and a dog, accompanied by coordinators of CEU’s Department of Historical Studies, visited the Archivum on a field trip to the university’s Budapest Site. During the almost four-hour program, they had the chance to listen to presentations, tour the building, and see the Archivum’s latest exhibition.

To introduce the venue, Chief Archivist and Head of Human Rights Program Csaba Szilágyi greeted the cohort of students in the Research Room, and gave an overview of the Archivum’s 30-year history and activities within CEU and Budapest, with special focus on collections, critical archiving, research and education, and public programs.

In what followed, Senior Archivist Márk László-Herbert and Research Fellow András Mink presented highlights of the holdings, focusing on those of potential research interest to the students, including collections on the Cold War and its afterlives, human rights movements and violations, marginalized communities, and propaganda.

Senior Reference Archivist Judit Hegedüs walked the students through the key functions of the Archivum’s online catalog. The exercise included tricks and tips for online searching, and required active involvement from the audience.

After a Q&A session and a coffee break, the group—guided by the aforementioned colleagues—visited several storage spaces in the building, where they had the opportunity to engage with original documents from various collections, such as forensic reports from the records of Physicians for Human Rights; letters from listeners of the Teenager Party music program of RFE’s Hungarian broadcasting service, amateur photographs from the Private Photo and Film Foundation’s heritage; and biographical card files from the Romania records of the RFE/RL Research Institute.

Senior AV Archivist Zsuzsa Zádori prepared a mini-exhibit of unique and by now obsolete AV media in the Archivum’s audiovisual studio. As co-curator of the Archivum’s latest exhibition, she then led the students to the Galeria Centralis to give them a vivid and well-informed insight into the making and content of The Tactless Photojournalist show, featuring documentary and street photos from Ceaușescu’s Romania shot by the prominent photojournalist from Târgu Mureş/Marosvásárhely, Lajos Erdélyi.