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Andrej Vašíček – Recherche & CV

“Cultural and Historical Memory of the Landscape in Hungary in the 18th Century”

Research Area 3 – Objects, Traces, Mapping: Everyday Experience of Spaces

Introduction

This dissertation examines the cultural and historical memory embedded in the rural and semi-rural landscapes of 18th-century Hungary. It explores how local communities perceived, shaped, and remembered their surroundings, focusing on the material traces, spatial practices, and symbolic representations that connected people to the land over time.

Research Questions

  • How was the landscape remembered and represented in legal, religious, and social contexts during the 18th century?
  • What material or symbolic traces of past uses and meanings can be identified in the landscape (e.g. crosses, boundary markers, hydrological structures, routes)?
  • How did natural features (rivers, forests, hills) become part of collective memory or identity?
  • In what ways did the transformation of the landscape—through cultivation, regulation, or settlement—affect the cultural memory of its inhabitants?

Methodology

The research combines approaches from environmental history, historical anthropology, and critical cartography. It draws on a variety of historical sources:

  • Urbaria and conscriptions, reflecting the socio-economic use of land.
  • Historical maps and cadastral plans, to track spatial organization and memory.
  • Parish records, inscriptions, and religious monuments, to trace symbolic landscape elements.
  • Narrative sources (such as local chronicles) for mental and lived geographies.

The project uses microhistorical case studies from specific regions of historical Upper Hungary to reconstruct the interaction between people and landscape.

Empirical Foundation:

The primary empirical basis includes:

  • Archival material from the Hungarian National Archives and Slovak regional archives.
  • 18th-century maps from military and ecclesiastical collections.
  • Fieldwork involving the documentation of surviving landscape features (e.g. stone crosses, remnants of old field systems, flood regulation structures).

Contribution to CEFRES Research Area 3 – Objects, Traces, Mapping

The dissertation contributes to the understanding of landscape as a palimpsest of objects and traces—a space marked by layers of past meanings, uses, and representations. It proposes that the memory of place is not only transmitted through texts or rituals but also inscribed into the terrain through spatial practices and preserved physical remnants. By investigating how people inhabited and interpreted their environment, this research offers a historical perspective on the production of space, connecting tangible objects with intangible memory. It also engages in mapping these traces, both literally (through GIS) and conceptually, as a way to understand how landscapes become historical and cultural archives.

CFA | Oszkár Sárkány Fellowship 2025/2026

Fellowship for CNRS Humanities & Social Sciences & IAS CEU Budapest Fellows

Initiated in 2025, the Oszkár Sárkány fellowship commemorates a Hungarian Bohemist (1912–1943), working for a new inclusive and transnational perspective on cultural history with strong ties to French developments in humanities and social sciences, who died tragically young during World War II in a punishment battalion where he was sent because of his oppositional stance to the Horthy regime.

Central European University Institute for Advances Studies (CEU IAS) & Parisian Institut d’études avancées (Paris IEA) in partnership with the French Research Center in Humanities and Social Sciences (CEFRES) offer mobility grants to Budapest (for IEA fellows) and Paris (for CEU IAS fellows) starting from the academic year 2025/2026.

SCHEDULES

For IAS CEU fellows → Paris:

  • July 14, 2025: Opening of the call
  • September 15, 2025, 23:59 CET: Deadline for submissions
  • September 30, 2025: Publication of the results
  • Duration: 1 month in Paris
  • Suggested period of mobility: 2025/2026 academic year, preferably in Spring 2026

For CNRS fellows → IAS CEU Budapest: Continue reading CFA | Oszkár Sárkány Fellowship 2025/2026

CFA | Research Grants in Balkan Studies 2025–2026

Research grants for French-speaking doctoral students (6 months)

Le ministère de l’Europe et des Affaires Étrangères, le réseau des UMIFRE et le réseau des Écoles françaises à l’étranger (EFE – MESR) soutiennent la jeune recherche en études balkaniques en proposant des bourses de terrain d’une durée de six mois à destination de doctorant/es et jeunes docteur/es poursuivant des recherches dans ce domaine. Les boursiers et boursières seront accueilli/es dans un ou plusieurs des centres membres du réseau des UMIFRE ou EFE partenaires du programme (Institut Français d’Études Anatoliennes d’Istanbul (IFEA), École française d’Athènes (EFA), Centre français de recherche en sciences sociales de Prague (CEFRES), École française de Rome (EFR). Continue reading CFA | Research Grants in Balkan Studies 2025–2026

UMIFRE fellowships for Ukrainian researchers | Results

      1. ANKHYM, Oleksii (Ivan Franko State University)
        Between Languages and Cultures: on Contemporary German-language literature by authors of Ukrainian origin
      2. KARABIN, Tetiana (Uzhhorod State University)
        Anti-Corruption Potential of Ukraine’s New Law on Administrative Procedure
      3. NAMESTIUK, Svitlana (Medical University Chernivtsi )
        Conceptualisation littéraire de la guerre et réception française du mythe du Donbass. Vers une poétique de la mémoire dans la littérature ukrainienne contemporaine
      4. PALIICHUK, Elina (Borys Grinchenko Kyiv Metropolitan University)
        The development of the concept of the translation ecosystem in Ukraine for accession to the EU
      5. YANENKO, Anna (Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra and Museums)
        Art and Photo (in) History: Museum of the History of Religion(s) of the Kyiv All-Ukrainian Museum Town in the early 1930s
      6. SHUMYLOVYCH, Bohdan (Lviv Centre for Urban History)
        “Quiet Trauma”: Wartime Violence and Mediatized Gaze
      7. BILOKON, Alona (Petro Mohyla Black Sea National University)
        Focuses on the intersection of energy transition, international relations, and regional development, with particular attention to the socio-economic and geopolitical dimensions of energy transition and the green economy.
      8. FISUN, Oleksandr (Karazin University Kharkiv)
        Resilience, and Local Governance in Ukraine’s Frontline Regions
      9. MYKHALCHUK, Roman (Rivne State University of Humanities)
        The Holocaust in the general district of “Voly-Podillia”: bystanders, victims, executioners, 1941-1944
      10. SHUMYTSKA, Halyna (Uzhhorod State University)
        Diversity, Identities and Language Integration
      11. KUDRYAVSTEVA, Natalia (State Pedagogical University Kryvyi Rih)
        Building Ukraine’s Multilingual Policy from Below
      12. ROMANYSHYM, Nataliya (Lviv Polytechnic National University)
        Ukrainian National Identity and Memory in Wartime Discourse: Literary Strategies and Symbolic Reconfiguration

WAITING LIST   

        1. Gnatiuk, Mykola (National University of “Kyiv-Mohyla Academy)
          Integration of Ukraine into the EU: Social Representations in the Context of War
        2. Razyhraev, Oleh (Lesya Ukrainka Volyn National University)
          Daily life in the prisons of interwar Poland (1918–1939)
        3. Stefurak, Olena (University of Tchernivtsi)
          Les traductrices de la diaspora ukrainienne : circulation et réception de la littérature ukrainienne en France (XXe–XXIe siècles)
        4. Chemerys, Hanna (Zaporizhzhia National University)
          Feminist Strategies in Ukrainian Wartime Art as a Soft Resistance

CFP | Queer Bookshelves and LGBTQI+ Literatures

Circulation, Anthologisation And Canon Formation In Comparative Perspective

Deadline for submissions: November 30, 2025
Date
: May 12-13, 2026
Location: Brussels
Language: English and French
Contact email: clement.dessy@ulb.be

Organizers
Mateusz CHMURSKI, CEFRES/Sorbonne Université
Clément DESSY, FNRS/Université libre de Bruxelles
Ana I. SIMÓN-ALEGRE, Adelphi University, NYC Continue reading CFP | Queer Bookshelves and LGBTQI+ Literatures

Paper Bonds

Paper Bonds
Bookmaking for Kin, Friends and Self in Contemporary Europe and the Middle East

A project developed within AV ČR-CNRS Tandem Program supported by the Czech Academy of Sciences, CNRS and CEFRES

Project principal investigators:
Hélène Martinelli (ENS Lyon / CEFRES)  helene.martinelli@ens-lyon.fr
Giedrė Šabasevičiūtė (Oriental Institute, Czech Academy of Sciences): saba@orient.cas.cz

ANNOTATION Continue reading Paper Bonds