I am a cultural historian with an interest in memory studies and a focus on Central and East Central Europe. Currently, I am a Research Fellow at the Centre for Collective Violence, Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the Institute of Advanced Studies, University College London. At UCL, I am working on a collection of oral history interviews, titled Final Account: Third Reich Testimonies.
I have been engaged in the study of memory cultures since I started working on my second book, Agents of Liberation. Holocaust Memory in Contemporary Art and Documentary Film (Central European University Press). While this book focused on contemporary visual culture, my latest work explores in a historical perspective how memory practices contributed to the (re-) emergence of fascist currents (forthcoming as Memory in Hungarian Fascism: A Cultural History, Routledge).
In the recent years, I worked as a senior research fellow at the Center for Jewish History in New York, the Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe in Leipzig, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, the Yad Vashem International Institute for Holocaust Research in Jerusalem, the Institute for Advanced Study at the Central European University in Budapest, and the Center for Research on Antisemitism, TU, Berlin. Previously, I taught at the Department for Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies at ELTE and the Department for Art Theory and Curatorial Studies at the University of Fine Arts in Budapest.
In addition to my scholarly work, I have been engaged as a curator and co-author in art and exhibition projects. I have worked together with professionals coming from inside and outside of the academia and applied non-academic forms of creative and critical thinking in order to reflect on pressing issues and address a broader audience.
To learn more about my work please visit my website at zoltankekesi.com or contact me per email at z.kekesi@ucl.ac.uk.
Zoltán Kékesi’s research is generously supported by the Pears Foundation.