Chief Archivist
szilagyc@ceu.edu
Csaba Szilágyi, with the Archivum since 1996, is responsible for the human rights collections, education, and public programs. He is one of the teaching fellows on the Archives, Evidence and Human Rights course and the Archives and Evidentiary Practices Specialization at CEU. Intermittently, he worked as an archives consultant for the Open Society Institute and Human Rights Watch (1999–2000), and was the curator of the Center for Human Rights Documentation and Research at Columbia University (2005–2006) in New York. He is interested in how technological advancement informs the collection, archiving, and dissemination of human rights records; the memorialization and representation of mass atrocities in the archival space; and the role of archives in the global refugee experience.
He studied Hungarian literature, holds an MA in American Studies, and is currently pursuing a PhD at the Amsterdam School for Heritage, Memory and Material Culture at the University of Amsterdam. Outside the archival world, Csaba translates fiction and historical and political writings.
- Unsettled: Redefining Archival Power: An Interview with Csaba Szilagyi / Interview, Association of Canadian Archivists, 02.06.2022.
- „A meggyilkoltak legalább ide visszatérnek” / Interview, Magyar Narancs, 14.17.2021.
- Srebrenicai kiállítás / Radio interview, Klubrádió, 09.07.2021.
- I Hate War’: Children’s Letters to America from Besieged Sarajevo / Interview, Balkan Insight, 01.07.2019.
- A rock and roll nagykövete – Ki volt Cseke László? / Interview, Magyar Narancs, 14.12.2017.
Central European University
This course aims at looking at the roles and uses of human rights documentation in the context of preserving recorded memory and the history of human rights.
Central European University
This seminar provides an overview of existing methods in legal and social sciences, including comparative legal analysis, quantitative methods, interviewing techniques, discourse analysis, and the archival method.
Central European University
The Archival Practice includes supervised practice in the Archivum’s professional activities. Students spend 30 hours in Budapest to familiarize themselves with the various stages of the archival workflow and the “invisible” processes of creating archives.
Central European University
The aim of the specialization is to provide students with theoretical grounding and practical skills in working and pursuing research in a contemporary and innovative archive.
- Szilágyi, Csaba and Jovchevski, Perica. “Critical Re-Archiving for Social Justice and Inclusive Memories of the Yugoslav Wars” in Conflicting Remembrance. The Memory of the Macedonian 2001 in Context, edited by Naum Trajanovski and Lidija Georgieva. Skopje: Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, 2023. pp. 148-167. https://library.fes.de/pdf-files/bueros/skopje/20152.pdf
- Szilágyi, Csaba. "Records of Forced Displacement and Refugee Narratives: A Case Study from the Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives in Budapest" in Sylvia Asmus, Doerte Bischoff, Burcu Dogramaci (eds.), Archive und Museen des Exils. Berlin, Boston : De Gruyter, 2019. pp. 149-162. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110542103-009
- Szilágyi, Csaba, "Re-archiving mass atrocity records by involving affected communities in postwar Bosnia and Herzegovina" in Sandra Ristovska, Monroe Price (eds.), Visual imagery and human rights practice. Cham, Switzerland : Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, pp. 131-152. http://catalog.osaarchivum.org/catalog/VYBGNge2
- Szilágyi, Csaba. "Representation of Mass Atrocities in Imagined 'Commemorative Arenas'." In Versus. Thematic issue Traces of Terror, Signs of Trauma (June-December 2014) 119: 71-91. http://versus.dfc.unibo.it/arc2b.php?numero=119
