CEU puts a special emphasis on following the life and well-being of its Alumni members after their graduation. Based on previous experience, articles written by or about Alumni members are quite popular among our readers, so we decided to make an off-line interview with Ádám Mestyán who graduated from the PhD program of the History Department at CEU in 2011, and is currently a Junior Fellow in the Society of Fellows at Harvard University. He also taught in the Middle East Centre of St Antony’s College, Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Oxford, and was a post-doctoral fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin.
The CEU Weekly: You mentioned that you travel a lot. From where are you writing to us?
Ádám Mestyán: At the moment I have just arrived in Cambridge, MA, after a conference in Qatar and a longer stay in Egypt.
TCW: You spent several years at CEU, what is your most memorable event from the time you spent here?
AM: The Dalai Lama’s visit was really cool.
TCW: It is easy to make friends at CEU, but I wonder how lasting these relationships are. Are you still in contact with people you got to know at CEU?
AM: I believe that we know about and follow each other, both my MA- and PhD-fellows.
TCW: You wrote your PhD thesis at CEU on cultural politics in the late Ottoman Empire, analyzing “the relations between administrations and music theatres in Cairo and Istanbul in the period of 1867 and 1892.” What topics are you interested in at the moment?AM: At the moment, I’m turning one half of my dissertation into a book. I am now very much interested in the history of Arabic printing. Also, I’m considering a new project about the interwar Arab world. And I have a lot of other ideas, very unfortunately…
TCW: While being a Post-doctoral Fellow in Berlin, you initiated the Project Jara’id – A Chronology of Nineteenth-Century Periodicals in Arabic, which is an online bibliography, hosted by the Zentrum Moderner Orient. Do you think that the future for historians will be more in the digital world than in dim, dusty archives?AM: Dim, dusty archives are good and are indispensable, of course, depending on your topic. Having this said, archives and digital docs are only resources. The real work is always interpretation and making connections.
There are some historians today who believe that digital tools will revolutionize history-writing, with new quantitative methods. I, myself, believe in the importance of digital techniques, but I do not see the consequences of this as being too so serious. Free data is only free data.
TCW: At the University of Oxford you were a Departmental Lecturer in the Modern History of the Middle East during the academic year of 2012/2013. What do you prefer – research or teaching?
AM: I like both and I believe it is very healthy to teach and do research at the same time. Certainly, I was also lucky because at Oxford my teaching load was not that heavy and my students were brilliant.
TCW: You are a Junior Fellow in the Society of Fellows at Harvard University until 2016. Does this mean that you are deeply immersed in research?
AM: Yes, at the moment I am absolutely immersed in research and writing. However, I’m also planning to take a break and teach somewhere in the academic year 2015-16.
TCW: You are also a poet, you have already published two books of poems. In one of your poems we can read the line “Jó hónapja nem beszéltem magyarul.” (~ “I haven’t spoken Hungarian for about a month.”) As a poet, I assume, you are closely connected to your mother tongue. Do you miss Hungarian words?AM: There are poets and writers who cannot live without the everyday experience of their mother tongue. I am not one of them because, for me, language is an obstacle in itself. But I do feel that I’m slowly losing the ease with which I write and speak Hungarian. And certainly my mother tongue carries a symbolic value for me – perhaps the last attachment to Hungary.
TCW: You also play the bass, you were a member of several Hungarian bands and you run marathons. I presume you have excellent time-management skills. Do you have any advice for our CEU students on how to balance all their studying duties with partying and other hobbies?AM: Keep the deadlines! Always. And set up your own deadlines. In addition, you should always know what your next step will be. Think ahead by at least a year.
And have fun at parties :) but know what is important and what is not.
TCW: And one last question: what is the first word that comes to your mind if you hear the word CEU?
AM: The names of my professors.
TCW: Thank you! We wish you further success in your academic endeavors!
Alexandra Medzibrodszky,
History,
Hungary
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