Zoltán Dujisin

Zoltán Dujisin is a Marie Curie Leading Fellow at Erasmus University Rotterdam, and his research interests include sociology of knowledge and politics of memory. Zoltán graduated in 2018 from Columbia University in New York with a PhD in Sociology. Previously, he pursued part of his doctoral studies at Sorbonne – Paris 1.

His research explores how claims to truth are legitimated through expertise, and the consequences of these processes for identity construction. His two research topics explore timely and contentious topics that connect history to a troubled present:

Current projects

Historiographic Expertise in Post-communist Politics

The research project Historiographic Expertise in Post-communist Politics aims to reveal the deeper political and symbolic significance of the region’s converging memory politics, manifested in relatively successful calls for pan-European recognition of Nazi and Communist crimes as equal. Using field analysis, prosopography and in-depth interviews, Zoltán trace this phenomenon back to the rise of state-sponsored memory institutes, hybrid bodies that concentrate a substantial number of memory practices and maintain a difficult and complex relation with the region’s historiography. He concludes that memory institutes are intrinsic to the region’s identity politics and may presage the role of social-scientific expertise in a changing, post-liberal order.

Russia Expertise in the Media Cold War

The research project Russia Expertise in the Media Cold War attempts to tackle two timely issues: the decline of traditional media and discussions on post-truth as part of an increasingly visible collision between Russia and the liberal order. Using the rich case-study provided by European media coverage of Russia’s activities in the information sphere, and mobilizing content analysis, in-depth interviews and ethnography, this project examines the production of journalistic identities through their embedding in networks of Russia expertise, and its consequences for how truth and expertise are constructed in the public sphere.

Publications

Unpacking Collective Memory: A Field Theoretical Approach in Sierp, Aline and Jenny Wüstenberg (eds.), Agency in Transnational Memory Politics: A Framework for Analyzing Practice, Berghahn Books, upcoming.

Post-Communist Europe: On the Path to a Regional Regime of Remembrance? in Kopeček, Michal and Piotr Wciślik (eds.), Authoritarian Pasts, Liberal Democracy and Intellectual History in East Central Europe After 1989, CEU Press, 2015

“Towards a collective memory of socialism? Grounding the discursive production of Hungarian and Czech post-communist anti-communism” Journal for Labour and Social Affairs in Eastern Europe, 13(4):475-488, 2010

“Political Fields as Spaces of Articulation: The case of Post-Communist Memory Cleavages”, working paper, Target Journal: European Journal of Political Research