Assoc. Prof. Zsombor Labadi, PhD, project leader and Associate Professor at the Chair of Hungarian Language and Literature, is recognised in his scholarly work for combining contemporary poetological and literary-theoretical methods with theories of interculturality in social communities. Zsombor Labadi, PhD, primarily focuses on issues of cultural identity and discourses that connect majority and minority cultures in Hungary and beyond, as well as on topics related to the historical and cultural phenomena of modernism and contemporary literature. His published works address various cultural-historical aspects and elements of identity in Hungarian and minority culture and literature in Vojvodina and Croatia. His research also includes components of intercultural mediation and social elements characteristic of the literary discourse of Central and Eastern Europe. In recent years, he has pursued further academic development in literary studies at the University of Pécs and has participated in final examinations and doctoral dissertation defences within the postgraduate programme in literary and cultural studies at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences since 2021. From 2012 to 2014, he served as Head of the Chair of Hungarian Language and Literature in Osijek. He was re-elected to this position in 2016 and 2024.
Asst. Prof. Dario Vuger, PhD, Assistant Professor at the Chair of Art History, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Osijek, participates in the project as a researcher specialising in visual studies and the phenomenology of new auditory-visual phenomena, particularly in the fields of digital media, augmented and virtual reality, and digital artistic practices. During the implementation of the project, through teaching, work with students and fieldwork, he will conduct interdisciplinary research into artistic phenomena, forms of sociality and ambient media in the context of digitality and techno-scientific reality, areas in which he has developed his academic and professional profile in recent years (published works in the volumes Palgrave Handbook of Image Studies, Palgrave Macmillan, 2022, and Iconology of Abstraction – Digital Images and the Modern World, Routledge Advances in Visual Studies, 2023; presentations at international conferences in Kraków, Bucharest, Nicosia, Fukuoka, Osaka, etc.).
Asst. Prof. Daniel Zec, PhD, from the Chair of Art History, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Osijek, participates in the project as a researcher with a particular focus on the artistic topography of the city of Osijek. Within the project, he will conduct art-historical and interdisciplinary research into architectural sculpture on the façades of secular buildings in Osijek, with particular emphasis on methods of digital art history. His previous research has focused on several areas of art history, particularly the period from the late 19th to the second half of the 20th century, and he has established himself as an expert in the history of sculpture in the European and, especially, Osijek cultural context. He regularly presents the results of his research at national and international academic conferences and publishes them in scholarly journals and conference proceedings.
Prof. Zoltan Medve, PhD, from the Chair of Hungarian Language and Literature, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Osijek, participates in the project as a researcher. His research focuses primarily on the concepts of memory and forgetting in popular, but also “high”, Croatian and Hungarian literature during the socialist period. This era is already sufficiently distant from the present, but has not yet fully become history, which allows for a certain degree of overview. The research is partly a reflection on Ricœur’s well-known view of Western versus Eastern and Central Europe, according to which forgetting predominates in the West, while memory predominates in Eastern and Central Europe. Within the project, he will therefore examine the almost invariably selective processes of remembering and forgetting in Croatian and Hungarian contexts during the paradigmatic period of the second half of the 20th century from a comparative perspective. The research results will provide a clearer insight into the distinctive characteristics of contemporary Croatian and Hungarian literature and, through their thematic and linguistic features, into the current cultural and directly or indirectly manipulated political situation, as well as the Central European “behaviour” that still depends, to a greater or lesser extent, on the burden of political attitudes now becoming history before our eyes.
Ádám György Walkó, PhD, is a foreign-language lecturer at the Chair of Hungarian Language and Literature, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Osijek. He participates in the project as a researcher in the group dealing with literary and artistic movements and exchanges in the Central European context, with particular emphasis on examining models and sites of cultural memory within the broader Central European literary narrative and its transcultural aspects. His previous research has focused on Croatian and Hungarian postmodern and avant-garde literature of the 20th century, with particular emphasis on intermediality and urbanity in short stories and other prose forms. He regularly presents his research results at national and international academic conferences and publishes them in scholarly journals and conference proceedings.
Timea Anita Bockovac, PhD, a member of the linguistic working group and Assistant Professor at the Chair of Hungarian Language and Literature, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Osijek, participates in the project as a researcher specialising in language contact studies and contrastive descriptive grammar. Within the project, she will focus on cross-linguistic specialist terminology and will develop a bilingual Croatian-Hungarian online Dictionary of Morphological Terminology. This specialised dictionary will contain and explain technical terms related to morphology, that is, the study of word forms and their derivational and inflectional elements.
Dubravka Kuna, PhD, is a Senior Lecturer in English at the Chair of Common Courses, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Osijek. She teaches English for Specific Purposes to undergraduate students of History, Art History, Philosophy, Croatian Language and Literature, Hungarian Language and Literature, and other study programmes. Her research interests include languages for specific purposes, lexicology and lexicography, syntax and discourse analysis. She presents her research results at national and international academic conferences and publishes them in scholarly journals and conference proceedings. She is an associate in the COLOURS European University Alliance (Language Group). Her work within the project will focus on the preparation and development of a digital English-Croatian glossary of basic concepts in art. Teachers and students from the Chair of Art History will be involved in the development of the glossary.
Małgorzata Stanisz Hanžek is a foreign-language lecturer in Polish (NAWA) at the Chair of Common Courses, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Osijek. She teaches Polish at beginner level to undergraduate students of Croatian Language and Literature, German Language and Literature, English Language and Literature, and other study programmes. Her research interests include the methodology of teaching Polish as a foreign language, the use of digital tools in teaching Polish as a foreign language, cultural heritage in Polish-language teaching, and Polish-Croatian cultural relations. Within the project, she will work on the topic Polish Culture and Civilisation through a Task-Based Learning Approach – A Proposal for Teaching Materials for Croatian-Speaking Learners Using Digital Tools. The project responds to the lack of specialised materials on Polish culture available in Croatian. Its aim is to prepare professional materials accompanied by visually attractive resources that will facilitate and improve the learning process and promote Polish culture within Polish-language courses.