The Consulate General of Hungary in Montreal and the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Debrecen (UD) signed a cooperation agreement in 2023 in order to better understand the history and preserve the heritage of the Hungarian people in Montreal, which was later joined by the Center for Oral History and Digital Storytelling of Concordia University. This work is now recognized and extended by the cooperation agreement between the two universities.
In Canada there are about 300,000 people who identify themselves as Hungarian, including almost 30,000 of them in Montreal. The objective of the cooperation is to conduct research on the past and present of the Hungarian community in Montreal and to map, preserve and present their memories and to record them in an academic context, coordinated by the Institute of English and American Studies (IEAS) of the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Debrecen (UD). In addition to IEAS, several units of the Department of Sociology and the Center for International Migration Studies of the Faculty of Humanities are also involved in the joint work.
Apart from the Montreal-based Hungarian organizations, Canadian universities will also be participating in the long-term joint work. The Center for Oral History and Digital Storytelling at Concordia University joined the program in 2024, and the planned agreement will soon formalize their cooperation, mainly in the field of oral history.
“This internationally renowned center supports the research efforts by providing professional knowledge, local contacts and specific tools to support the preparation of life history interviews besides organizing workshops for the faculty's lecturers and Ph.D. students to prepare them methodologically and by introducing them to the visualization programs developed by the center, which can be used for interviews,” said Balázs Venkovits to the portal hirek.unideb.hu.
The director of the Institute of English and American Studies added that he was confident that the broader cooperation could even give impetus to other research projects or student and teacher exchange programs, as Concordia University is among the world's top 200 institutions of higher education in several fields.
Over the past one and a half years, this international scholarly project has achieved a number of outstanding results. These include a variety of publications and developments aimed at a wide audience and at the academic public, which have already created a methodology, a network of cooperation and a model that makes it possible for the project to expand beyond the research of the Hungarian diaspora in Montreal.
“We have already conducted several interviews and started collecting data in the Hungarian community in Montreal. At the same time, the development of an interactive map at the University of Debrecen has also been started, which now provides an overview of Hungarian-related organizations and events of the past 100 years on a platform where visitors can tour the city and view archived photographs, documents and interviews alongside data on the given sites,” said Balázs Venkovits.
In the year 2024, a trilingual, neatly designed album on the history of the St. Stephen's Balls in Montreal will be published by Debreceni Egyetemi Kiadó [University of Debrecen Publishing House], and an academic study on the integration role of this special event will also come out, prepared by Balázs Venkovits and Éva Huszti (Department of Sociology and Social Policy).
This year, the interactive map is scheduled to be uploaded and made available to the general public, and the working group is also focusing on processing the history of Hungária Social Club, which will be 100 years old in 2026, in the form of a centennial publication and an academic paper.
Another truly important component of the project is a questionnaire-based survey conducted across Canada and coordinated by Éva Huszti. It is expected to be launched this summer, followed by data analysis and publication in academic journals in Hungary and abroad.
The research findings and results accessed so far will be presented to the academic community at a scholarly forum held in Budapest on June 13.
Press Centre - BZs
