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György Majtényi
Research Fellow (10/2019–02/2020)
Transnational Memory of the Roma Holocaust/Porrajmos
Roma history can be illustrated both within the context of the history of a given country/nation states and – breaking somewhat with these national histories – in the context of a unified Roma history. This latter approach might be called a "transnational" depiction of Roma history. Recent decades have seen the publication of several Roma history books that describe the history of Roma communities from ethnogenesis to the present in the framework of a unified narrative in a "transnationalised" space, partly independent from the histories of nation states. Discussions of and engagements with collective traumas might also have played a role in the construction of a unified Roma history and in the strengthening of a Roma national/ethnic identity. This research examines the stages and actors in the process through which the Roma Holocaust/Porrajmos became a 'site of memory' within Roma minority communities living in different nation states, and later the function of this 'site of memory' in the making of a unified, common narrative of Roma history and in the transnational process of Roma national identity building.
György Majtényi is a social historian and professor at Károly Eszterházy University. Between 2000 and 2011, he was department head of the National Archives of Hungary. He received his PhD in 2004 from the Eötvös Loránd University with a thesis on social mobility in post-1945 Hungary and his habilitation in 2010. His recent research interests include Roma social history, the history of East-Central Europe in the twentieth century, intellectual history, and historiography.
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