Dr. Albert Simkus, a Sociology and Political Science professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology [5], received an IREX grant to do research in Hungary from 1979-1980 as part of the Eastern European Exchange Program. Dr. Simkus recently spoke with IREX about his research experience and career trajectory.
How did your research experience lead to where you are now?
My research experience in Hungary, facilitated by my IREX grant, was essential to my getting a position in the Sociology Department and the Center for East European Studies at the University of Michigan [6]. In turn, that position facilitated my becoming more broadly educated about the larger region and led to my publications on Hungary, then East-Central Europe, and subsequent academic positions in the U.S., and now Norway, where I have been living since 1998.
What was your research about?
My research was on the topic of “Social Change and Social Mobility: The case of Hungary [7].” This involved working on data analyses of a very large national social survey of over 40,000 respondents. I worked primarily with the social statistics department of the Hungarian Central Statistical Office [8], doing my individual analyses with their data using their computer center. In 1979, it was extremely unusual for an American academic to be able to work directly with individual-level survey data within a Soviet Bloc country.
What was it like to conduct research during that time?
Everything scholarly depended on personal, international, and national relationships based on building trust and affection among those of us who cared about the same topics. My Hungarian colleagues helped teach me how to deal with my life, as well as my research, using East-Central European methods. It was hard getting used to being listened to or being under surveillance, finally learning that it didn’t matter.
How has your regional experience broadened over time?
I broadened my research from Hungary to include most of East-Central Europe. I taught courses related to East-Central Europe at the University of Michigan and Vanderbilt University. Based on funding from the Norwegian Research Council, in 2001 I began a program of network building and large-scale national social surveys in seven countries of the Western Balkans, and continue to conduct survey research in this region.