My Process - A Way Forward | Zsuzsa Nagy-Sandor

Just a few days ago I began writing for this post, lead by exasperation and a sense of futility. The following was my opening statement: “It has been a month and a half since university started and I am no closer to narrowing down my thesis topic. If anything, it has become more vague.”

The major uncertainty holding me back was finding the right terminologies to describe my areas of interest within heritage work. Without the right terminology I did not know what to search for, what types of articles to read, what sort of initiatives to investigate – in fact I wasn’t even sure if the things that interested me were a valid part, an existing facet of heritage related work.

And then, I attended a conference organized in the Petőfi Irodalmi Múzeum (Petőfi Literary Museum) by the Pulszky Society - Hungarian Museum Association. The subject was Managing Collections in Participatory Museums. I sat there, listening to experts of the field talk about their own projects and the management goals of their institutions. I was bombarded with terminology previously unfamiliar to me, linked to both theoretical and practical explanations – and I found myself right smack in the middle of my research interests. In my head things started to take shape.

The terminologies the conference used were all in Hungarian, and I am not yet sure of their English equivalents (I’m working on it though!). However, the most interesting presentations of the conference, for me, were the ones that focused not only on what communities can do for the safeguarding and transmission of heritage, but what heritage can do for the communities.

Bearing this in mind I returned to an earlier effort sense-making effort of mine. In order to get closer to a well-defined area of interest I had decided to do what I have done before, as a part of my thesis planning process: write a list of sorts, map out my various interests and look for common denominators.

After the conference I took out this page and organized my thoughts. While not the only such page in my many notebooks, it includes several of the key aspects I would like to build my thesis around, and some ideas, which I think, might help narrow down my subject even further in the future. Looking at this page and breaking down each entry into its core component, I learn the following about my interests:

I wish to investigate issues of heritage related work meant to foster social goals.

Breaking this sentence down even further I see thee main questions I will have to answer in order to specify and narrow down my topic: What type of issues am I interested in? What specifically do I mean by heritage related work? What social goals do I wish to focus on?  

What I can say about these questions now are still generic, but are already taking me one step closer to identifying my main areas of interest. Here are some of the general guidelines I’m identifying for myself:

•        My goal is not to look at communities brought together by a shared passion for a heritage element (e.g. a folk-dancing group), but rather – and this is what the word ‘related’ is trying to hint at – to look at how heritage or places of memory can be used or even reused, repurposed, reinterpreted, so help work towards social aims.
•       Social aims can include community building, integration, tackling mental health issues, among countless others.
• -       One of the core problems I keep returning to is the longevity and the sustainability of such socially engaged heritage related work, and therefore this might be the (or one of) the core issues I would like to focus on

My next steps are clear: write a list of all the Hungarian terms, phrases and approaches I have encountered at the conference. Then I must research resources on them in Hungarian, while simultaneously learning their English equivalents and researching for resources on those as well. In the translation process I have already asked for assistance from one of my professors and to get me started on the Hungarian literature I have asked two of the three presenters from the conference for their presentation slides as well as their contacts. They both seemed happy to help and I will be contacting them soon. I also think that the institutions they work for might serve as a terrific place for me to do an internship in.

At the same time I will be collecting institutions and organizations that carry out work I am interested in, which relate to this topic. One such non profit organization has already caught my attention, that of the Mind Sapce, and specifically their work within the EU funded NewPilgimAge project - though I am only now beginning to investigate their work.

I am confident that once I find my footing in this field I have not yet worked with, I will start finding the directions that interest me the most and will be able to identify where there is room for another thesis. This will also allow me to develop a research methodology and help me identify my main sources – besides literature review. Simultaneously, the outcome of my project will depend on my answers to the three questions listed above, though I suspect that there will be several outcomes, and I hope that I will have the opportunity to put what I have learnt into practice through involvement in an existing project or through the creation of my own.

I see countless directions in which my work might go, but for now, I am happy that I have found my direction, however unspecific, and that I have found a few people to whom I can reach out to. I feel less alone in my process and am once gain excited to move forward.

To learn more about the Collection Management Conference click here.

To learn more about the work of Mind Space click here.

To learn more about the NewPilgrimAge program click here.