What is Visegrad Scholarship at the Open Society Archives?

Scholarships are awarded two times per year on a com­pet­i­tive basis to scholars, artists or journalists from V4 and non-V4 coun­tries who wish to con­duct research at OSA, and whose cur­rent research projects are rel­e­vant to the hold­ings and the given research pri­or­i­ties of the Fund and OSA. The €3,000 scholarship is designed to pro­vide access to the archives, cover travel to/from Budapest, mod­est sub­sis­tence, and accom­mo­da­tion for a research period of two months. Scholarships for shorter peri­ods are pro-rated.

Altogether, 20 fel­low­ships are awarded annu­ally to selected applicants from V4 coun­tries.

Research theme within the Visegrad Scholarships at OSA in 2026/27: Naming Reality

The words of Václav Havel on the need for truthfulness in times of social conflict returned to public attention in 2026. Politicians and the wider public increasingly began discussing systemic problems within the international order and the relationship between truth and politics. During the Cold War, openly describing reality was often risky or restricted. Official language concealed crises and conflicts through what Havel called “evasive language” — replacing reality with ideological rhetoric.

This call therefore encourages researchers and artists to reflect on how reality was described under conditions of censorship, limited access to information, and political pressure between East and West. On the occasion of the 35th anniversary of the Visegrad Group, it also recalls the efforts of Central European countries after 1989 to rebuild a shared political language grounded in open debate and reliable information.

Subtopics

We invite scientists, researchers, artists, and journalists to reflect on what the “Naming Reality” project can offer and remind us of, including within the following:

• the content and practices of truth-telling among oppositionists and dissidents;
• the dilemmas of artistic and literary actors in re-creating socio-political languages that paradoxically eschewed direct engagement with “reality”;
• cases of ideological disillusionment and awakening among left-wing thinkers and workers and re-evaluation of Marxist concepts regarding “reality”;
• the strategies of the documentary media: novels, films, private photo collections;
• the role of transnational cultural organizations in promoting realist and/or aesthetically reflexive works and authors;
• the tools of empirical realism and its relationship to political thinking;
• the samizdat cultures of bypassing official channels and documenting phenomena;
• the workings of propaganda and the dismantlement of the very idea of truth;
• the usage of political psychiatry against people whose perception of abusive realities was questioned;
• the status of information within archival cultures of fact-gathering and documentation;
• critical archiving from the margins (documentation about marginalized communities, racialized or stigmatized identities);
• transnational networks of information about development behind the Iron Curtain;
• human rights monitoring and reporting in Socialist states and their connection with Western organizations/exilic communities;
• the limits and paradoxes of anti-Stalinist prose;
• the paradoxes of documenting “totalitarianism,” dissent, and protest in the 70s, at the heart of the détente;
• the Western reception of (un)comfortable truths about Socialism/Communism;
• the epistemological challenges of expert cultures in times of information and material shortages (the reliability of data and the methods of sociology, statistics, futurology, demography, food engineering within Communism)
• the afterlives of censored cultural artifacts after the fall of Communism;
• the post-1989 re-evaluation and verification of systemic socio-political insights from before 1989 (the meta-analysis of their framing, concepts, as well as of their accuracy).

The sub-topics are meant to enable and inspire various reflections on the topic of the call, not to limit the range of possible connected themes and analyses. Potential candidates can refer to them, enrich them, and work with them. Please also mention the collections you would like to consult and be as specific as possible with regards to the subfonds and series you might find relevant for your research.

Please contact Csaba Szilágyi prior to submission.