Creativity
Tailored Academic Focus
Inclusivity
Mentoring
Teaching Pillars
Designed curricula*
* these are few examples of the syllabi designed.
Digital Humanities
Host Institution: ELTE Budapest
To what extent the AI revolution changes the way we work with documents? Why digital books are different than printed ones in terms of historical sources? Should historians still go to the archives?
Throughout our course, we worked with various methodologies concerning digital primary sources and issues raised.
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Introduction to Social Sciences
Host Institute: Open Learning Initiative Up- Access Program @ Central European University
The Introduction to Social Sciences seminar aimed to offer a tailored support for students with a refugee status, asylum-seekers, or that witnessed forced displacement and wanted to apply for BA and MA programs in prestigious universities.
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Breakin' the Law. Challenging the socialist state in the 20th century
Host institution: ELTE Budapest
The course on the history of dissent in Central and Eastern Europe aims to unfold the history of Communism by using another approach, that is, to see the agency of particular classes of people: revolutionaries, writers, and students in specific decades.
Primary Sources: Between Analogue and Digital
Host institution: Milestone Institute Budapest
The course focused on the development of the students’ ability of treating and analyzing sources and forming arguments about events of the past or the present. The module primarily covered contemporary and modern history and included a visit to the Open Society Archives in Budapest.
Mars and Venus
Host Institution: Milestone Institute Budapest
The aim of this module is to explain the evolution of thinking about Indo-European deities. We examined how the image of Mars and Venus (and other gods) have been transformed in history, and what kinds of meanings have been attached to these transformations.
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The Secret Histories of Budapest
Host Institute: Open Learning Initiative Week-End Program @ Central European University
The course "The secrets of Budapest" aimed to unfold the hidden stories of Budapest. Throughout the session, we explored the history of Budapest in relationship with the greater world. The students learned more about how to challenge the dominant cultural memory of Budapest.
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500+ h
taught within different educational frameworks
12
syllabi designed for high-school students, access programs for students affected by war, refugees or asylum-seekers, and university-level students
86%
admission rate for students at their university
7
country destinations for BA, MA level students
Teaching Philosophy*
* teaching philosophy expresses my values and beliefs about teaching.
Why educators?
Usually, the academic convention in East and Central Europe is the following: if you want to be a good instructor, you must have a very well-knitted and solid academic focus, out of which the teaching skills will naturally spring. I hold a limited agreement with this interpretation. An educator should be able to convey the knowledge to the student, adapt and tailor the content and help the student to reach their settled objectives. Though I concede that research provides a solid fundament to the content, I genuinely believe that democratizing education should start by focusing more on the student's needs first.
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My dissertation focused on the Hungarian and Romanian 1968ers, specifically on the impact of rock music in the socialist bloc. Based on archival sources and oral history, I researched, analyzed, and demonstrated how Radio Free Europe's broadcasts impacted its teenage audience in Hungary and Romania in the 1960s and 1970s. The doctoral experience at the European University Institute and the scientific master’s degree (Master de Recherche) in Contemporary History at Université Sorbonne Paris IV gave me the relevant expertise in the following academic fields: History of Communism, archival studies, cultural history, history of the press, comparative literature, history of art and social sciences.
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Throughout my doctoral studies, I learned the importance of disseminating knowledge. Though I concede that research is fundamental in this aspect, I believe that educational outreach is crucial, especially in this decade. Being aware of the need to balance knowledge and praxis, I pursued my academic focus by exposing myself to multiple archives and leading oral history interviews and conference presentations. Working with such a creative topic taught me multiple ways of sharing and disseminating a message.
First and foremost, I consider myself an educator due to the eclectic institutional background that provided my teaching experience. Compared to a teacher, lector, or professor, the word educator designs the maieutic process of helping students find their best version. The word educator is derived from the Latin word "educare," which means "to bring up," "to train," or "to rear." "Educare" itself is related to "educo," which means "I lead forth" or "I take out," and "ex-" (out) + "duco" (I lead). By taking this etymology into account, I believe the educator’s role should rely on four main pillars: creativity, mentoring, inclusivity and tailored academic focus.
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What makes humanities education vital?
Since March 2020, I am teaching Historiography, Primary Sources, Academic Writing, Public History, and Modernity at the Milestone Institute from Budapest. Milestone Institute is an educational initiative that gathers dedicated high schoolers from Hungary who aim to expand their skills and knowledge. Throughout my weekly sessions, the dedicated high-school students are heavily encouraged to debate and problematize the main issues in humanities. Regarding materials used, primary sources, archives, interviews, zines, and literary texts are particularly favoured. By working in each session with the primary documents, I intend to tailor the academic focus to the needs of each of the students. Those interested in applying for Law worked on juridical corpora (Justinian Law, Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen). The ones that intended to prioritize History received training in Oral History and created a personal archive. Together, we discovered unique family stories, such as the stories of those affected by the Holocaust, or gender relationships in rural Hungary.
The educational experience extends beyond the location of the institution itself. The exchange of ideas and suggestions continued with the designed platform (Canvas), where the students received constant qualitative feedback for their weekly assignments and essays. As well, the educational process took place beyond the classroom walls. Some sessions took place at the Open Society Archivum, where we discussed the issues of provenance, archival curation and metadata in the framework of the course Primary Sources. When discussing the History of modern architecture, the courses took place in the 7th district of Budapest. As an educator in the Humanities, I strongly believe in the students' engagement with other local institutions. This approach favours unexpected connections between the theory and their immediate surroundings.
From September 2023, I decided to use these skills in a new context: teaching at the university. I taught at the Eötvos Lóránd University (ELTE) from Budapest throughout the Global Teaching Fellowship framework. By designing and implementing the syllabus for the course Breakin' the Law. Dissent movements against the socialist state, I learned how to tailor the latest debates in the historiographic scholarship and disseminate it to the student's level. Students were heavily encouraged to reflect on their learning process and always argue their opinions with relevant primary sources.
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Tailored academic focus and creativity
Inclusivity and mentoring
Lessons learned from the students
My experience as an educator at the Milestone Institute from Budapest and ELTE Budapest were enhanced by my teaching involvement in the Open Learning Initiative (OLIve) Program held at the Central European University in Budapest. This global civic initiative aims to integrate and familiarize refugees and asylum seekers with the principal civic topics. Within this initiative, I taught three courses between September 2021 and June 2023: Introduction to Global History, The Secret Histories of Budapest and Social Sciences (Tutorial).
Throughout the Open Learning Initiative, I learned methods to address a multicultural classroom, adapt the curriculum to the student's knowledge, and respond to various student issues. As the students' needs, ages (between 15-50) and levels of knowledge varied significantly, I substantially improved my mentoring skills. The weekly sessions also were heavily based on non-formal education. The weekly course Secret Histories of Budapest was taught outside the university premises. The students learned more about their city's history, society, and architecture weekly.
From January 2023 onward, the experience of teaching people who witnessed war was doubled by my involvement in the Invisible University for Ukraine, an academic project hosted by the Central European University. Throughout the courses dedicated to the students in Ukraine, I learned how to adapt the previous skills to an online format. Since this initiative engaged students with different language skills and prior knowledge, I favoured a differentiated level of challenge throughout the teaching activities. On a broader scheme, the teaching experiences with asylum seekers, refugees or those affected by war taught me that sharing historical knowledge as a key civic duty became one of my core beliefs.
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Public History Projects*
*A public history project makes historical information accessible and engaging for a broader public, through collaboration with institutions such as museums, archives or by engaging with digital world, through podcasts and blogs.
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The Secret Myths of Budapest
Together with the students from the Milestone Institute Budapest, we examined how the images of Mars and Venus (and other gods) have been transformed in history, and what kinds of meanings have been attached to these transformations. The sessions, held between February 2023 and March 2023 focused on how the deity representation shifted in time. Allow yourself to listen to these stories in the link below and see how the local statues from Budapest were presented.
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History in Public Space- HIIPS
The project History in Public Space gathered students from Erasmus Mundus Program for their Budapest internship at the Blinken Open Society Archives in January and February 2024. Students explored themes of historical erasure and urban memory, culminating in a showcase event celebrating their public history project achievements. Witness their legacy as their projects continue to shape the narrative of Hungarian history by clicking on the link below.
Teaching Artifact*
*A teaching artifact refers to any physical or digital object, tool, or resource created by educators to facilitate learning and understanding in a classroom or educational setting. The key purpose of teaching artifacts is to enhance the teaching and learning process by providing students with tangible or interactive materials that support their comprehension, engagement, and retention of academic content.
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Workshop: Learning Autonomy in Action
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