Blinken OSA Archivum at CEU Orientation Week in Vienna

Blinken OSA Archivum showcased its educational resources and opportunities at CEU Orientation Week in Vienna, and colleagues gave their class presentations during Zero Week.

The Central European University (CEU) kicked off the 2024/25 academic year with its annual Orientation Week in Vienna, where the Blinken OSA Archivum introduced its resources for research, educational offerings, and diverse activities to incoming students.

Led by Fanni Andristyák (Outreach and Education Officer), Judit Hegedüs (Reference Archivist), and Csaba Szilágyi (Chief Archivist), the Archivum’s team welcomed students at an interactive information table. The team displayed unique archival items, and special merchandise, organized a quiz with tote bags as prizes, and provided detailed updates on the academic courses offered by the Archivum’s staff.

The Archivum offers a diverse range of undergraduate and postgraduate courses that reflect our commitment to providing students with a rich, interdisciplinary academic experience that bridges theory and practice.

Following the Orientation Week our colleagues gave class presentations regarding the upcoming courses in the 2024/2025 academic year. By drawing on its extensive collections and expertise, the Archivum continues to be a vital part of CEU’s academic environment. For the 2024-2025 academic year, our courses include:

• Encountering Facts in the Archive: Historical Method, Theory, and Archival Work – This interdisciplinary course explores how historical facts are approached through the lenses of historiography, journalism, and archival theory.

• Archives, Evidence, and Human Rights – A long-established course that examines the role of human rights documentation, memory, justice, and the preservation of archival records, particularly those related to dissident movements.

• Erasure – The City in the Archive (and vice versa) – Part of CEU’s “History in the Public Sphere” program, this course offers a combination of lectures, site visits, and seminars, focusing on memory politics and historical reinterpretations in urban landscapes.

• Archival Practice – This hands-on course allows students to engage in supervised archival work at Blinken OSA in Budapest, offering 30 hours of in-depth experience with the archival workflow and the unseen processes behind creating archives.

• History in the Visual Mode: Methods and Practices of Documentary Storytelling – A course that explores the representation of contested historical events in documentary film, blending theoretical analysis with practical filmmaking techniques to examine the relationship between history, memory, and public space.