Head of the program: Dr. Habil. Ágnes Judit Szilágyi (PhD)

E-mail: szilagyi.agnes@btk.elte.hu

Address:  1088 Budapest, Múzeum körút 6–8, II. 212.

Our doctoral program has been tutoring PhD students since 1993, the launch of the historian doctoral school at our University. In the Doctoral School of History our program is one of the most popular ones. For writing a dissertation our courses provide not just essential preparation, but methodological preparation as well, looking out for the newest local and international results of the discipline. The workshops prepare our students for holding specialistic or informative lectures, along with developing publications for both local and international audiences. The high number of applicants enables us to set requirements for the knowledge of at least two foreign languages, one on an intermediate level, and one on an advanced level, outside of the expectation of historical awareness from the auditioned. Surveillance of the results and progress of our students happens annually, in the framework of scientific conferences. The most valuable presentations are then published in the journals close to the Department of Modern and Contemporary Universal History: in ”Öt kontinens” (Five Continents, a foreign language periodical edited by professor Dr. István Majoros) and in ”Évkönyv” (Yearbook, headed by professor Dr. Gábor Székely). Both issues are published in print, in limited copies, but their contents are accessible on the internet. Our lecturers, post-doctoral fellows, and PhD students are in a close professional relationship, and they co-operate with local institutions (MTA BTK TTI, NEB, Politikatörténeti Intézet etc.) concerned with similar topics, along with foreign universities and international organizations.

Erasmus connections provide semester-term research opportunities in foreign countries for our PhD students, and it is expected of them to use this opportunity.

Curriculum of the Doctoral Programme: BTKD-TÖ-JKE

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Introduction to Digital Library Use

With the advancement of digitization, electronic databases, bibliographies, and note-taking software are playing an increasingly important role in historical research. This course focuses on introducing these tools and their practical applications.

Recommended literature:

• Matthew Battles: Library: An Unquiet History. New York, W. W. Norton, 2015.
• Jim D. Lester – James D. Lester: Writing Research Papers: A Complete Guide. Fourteenth edition. Harlow, Pearson Education Limited, 2014.
• Digital Libraries and Multimedia Archives: Revised Selected Papers. Cham, Springer International Publishing, 2017.

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Historiography (19^th Century)

Questions on nineteenth-century world history writing. Historians from today’s perspective, the beginnings of universal history writing in Hungary in the nineteenth century. The most important authors and works, conceptual debates, and interpretations.

Recommended literature:

• Jane Burbank – Frederick Cooper: Empires in World History: Power and the Politics of Difference. Princeton and Oxford, Princeton University Press, 2010.
• Johannes Feichtinger – Franz L. Fillafer – Jan Surman: The Worlds of Positivism: A Global Intellectual History, 1770–1930. Cham, Springer International Publishing and Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.
• Ilaria Porciani – Jo Tollebeek: Setting the Standards: Institutions, Networks and Communities of National Historiography. Houndmills and New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.

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Historiography (20th Century)

Questions on twentieth-century world history writing. Historians from today’s perspective, universal history writing in Hungary in the twentieth century. The most important authors and works, conceptual debates, and interpretations.

Recommended literature:

• Búr Gábor – Pál István – Stempler Ádám (eds.): Followed by the Affected Compassion of the Free World: The 1956 Revolution from Different Perspectives. Budapest, Eötvös Loránd University Eötvös Publishing House, 2023.
• Manuel Perez Garcia – Lúcio de Sousa: Global History and New Polycentric Approaches: Europe, Asia and the Americas in a World Network System. Singapore, Springer and Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.
• Kiséry András – Komáromy Zsolt – Varga Zsuzsanna (eds.): Worlds of Hungarian Writing: National Literature as Intercultural Exchange. Madison and Teaneck, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2016.

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Workshop Seminar (19^th Century)

A research seminar focusing on universal historical issues of the nineteenth century. The specific topic is jointly determined by the lecturer and the doctoral students at the beginning of the semester based on the seminar leader's field of research and the individual, narrower topics of the PhD students. A detailed bibliography is compiled as the first seminar assignment.

Recommended literature:

• Christopher Alan Bayly: The Birth of the Modern World, 1780–1914: Global Connections and Comparisons. Oxford, Blackwell Publishing, 2004.
• Stefan Berger – Christoph Conrad: The Past as History: National Identity and Historical Consciousness in Modern Europe. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.
• Sebastian Conrad: What Is Global History? Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2016.

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Workshop Seminar (20^th Century)

A research seminar focusing on universal historical issues of the twentieth century. The specific topic is jointly determined by the lecturer and the doctoral students at the beginning of the semester based on the seminar leader's field of research and the individual, narrower topics of the PhD students. A detailed bibliography is compiled as the first seminar assignment.

Recommended literature:

• Patrick Boucheron – Stéphane Gerson (eds.): France in the World: A New Global History. New York, Other Press, 2019.
• James Mark – Artemy Mikhailovich Kalinovsky – Steffi Mahrung (editors): Alternative Globalizations: Eastern Europe and the Postcolonial World. Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2020.
• Immanuel Wallerstein – Carlos Aguirre Rojas – Charles C. Lemert: Uncertain Worlds: World-Systems Analysis in Changing Times. Boulder, Taylor & Francis Group, 2012.

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Document Reading

Preparatory research work for writing PhD theses requires the exploration and analysis of primary sources and archival materials. In this program, these documents were primarily created in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The course aims to familiarize doctoral students with the Hungarian and foreign institutions preserving these documents and to prepare them for the methodological challenges of processing archival sources.

Recommended literature:

• János Mihály Bak – Patrick J. Geary – Gábor Klaniczay (eds.): Manufacturing a Past for the Present: Forgery and Authenticity in Medievalist Texts and Objects in Nineteenth-Century Europe. Leiden and Boston, Brill, 2015.
• Miriam Dobson – Benjamin Ziemann: Reading Primary Sources: The Interpretation of Texts from Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century History. Second edition. London and New York, Routledge, 2020.
• Tuuli Forsgren: The Digital Infrastructure of the Archives. Umeå, Umeå University, 2002.

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One seminar must be completed from among the freely selectable courses listed in the doctoral program.

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One seminar must be completed from among the freely selectable courses listed in the doctoral program.

For further information:

Study Unit List of the Doctoral Programme

More information about the PhD Studies