Dr Péter Apor

January - December 2012
Mail: aporp(at)ceu(dot)hu

Apor is a fellow at the Imre Kertész Kolleg Jena from January till December 2012. Between 2003 and 2011 he was a research fellow at the Central European University, Budapest and an associate researcher at the University of Exeter (2008-09). After finishing his PhD on Communist representations of history in Hungary at the European University Institute in Florence in 2002 Apor spent a year in London at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies as a Teacher/Fellow in Hungarian Studies.

Research project at the Kolleg

Apor is working on a joint book with fellow researcher at the Imre Kertész Kolleg Jena, Dr. James Mark. Taking Hungary as a case study, the two fellows work together on a book that will explore, as a central theme, the extent to which late socialist official and unofficial activism in Eastern Europe was transnational in form from the mid-1960s onwards, examining its relationship both to broader international trends, and exploring the idea that the particular forms of late socialist transnationalism shaped later engagements with the processes of Europeanization and globalisation after 1989. The book is based on an extensive oral history (80 life history interviews) and archival research previously conducted within the framework of the collaborative research project "Around 1968" coordinated at Oxford University 2006-present.

Main areas of research

Politics of historiy and memory
Social and cultural history of the socialist dictatorship
History of historiography

Monographs

Sorin Antohi, Balázs Trencsényi and Péter Apor, Narratives Unbound: Historical Studies in Post-comunist Eastern Europe, Budapest - New York, 2007.
Oksana Sarkisova and Péter Apor, Past for the Eyes: East European Representations of Communism in Cinema and Museums after 1989, Budapest - New York, 2008.
Balázs Apor, Péter Apor and Arfon Rees, The Sovietization of Eastern Europe: New Perspectives on the Postwar Period, Washington, DC, 2008.

Articles (selection):

'A népi demokrácia építése: Kunmadaras, 1946' (The Building of the People's Democracy: Kunmadaras, 1946), in: Századok 13/June 1998, pp 601-632.
`The Eternal Body: The Birth of The Pantheon of the Labor Movement in Budapest`, in: East Central Europe - L`Europe du Centre-Est: Eine wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift 31 1/2004, pp 23-42.
'The Joy of Everyday Life: Microhistory and the History of Everyday Life in the Socialist Dictatorships' in East Central Europe - L`Europe du Centre-Est: Eine wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift 34-35 (1-2 2007-2008), pp 185-218.
'Eurocommunism: Commemorating Communism in Contemporary Eastern Europe' in A European Memory?Contested Histories and Politics of Remembrance. Eds.: Malgorzata Pakier - Bo Strath, Oxford: Berghahn, 2010, pp 233-246.
'A bizonyosság bizonytalansága: elbeszélés és bizonyítás a Tanácsköztársaság históriájában, 1959-1965' (The Uncertainty of Certainty: Narrative and Evidence in the History of the First Hungarian Soviet Republic, 1959-1965) in BUKSZ 2010, pp 342-352.
'Hitelesség és hitetlenség: emlékezet, történelem és közelmúlt-feldolgozás Kelet-Közép-Európában' (Authenticity and Scepticism: Memory, History and the Coming to Terms with the Recent Past in East-Central Europe) in Korall 41 (2010. 3.), pp 159-183.
Péter Apor - James Mark: 'Mobilizing Generation: The Idea of 1968 in Hungary' in Talking About My Generation. Szerk.: Anna von der Goltz. Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2011, pp 99-118.
'Praefiguratio: Exemplary History and Temporal Order in the Thirtieth Anniversary of the First Hungarian Soviet Republic of 1919' in Politics, Religion and Ideology 12 (June 2011), pp 123-141.

Reviews

'The Open Society Archives in Budapest' in European Review of History 6 (Spring 1999), pp 129-130.
'Le " socialisme à visage humain ": Le Parc des statues de Budapest' in La Nouvelle Alternative 66-67 (October-December 2005), pp 189-193.
'From "within": Impressions and Recommendations on Future Developments in the Comparative History Field' (Conference report) in Centre for Advanced Study Sofia Newsletter 1 (2008), pp 6-7.