Staff Profile

My background is in art history and archaeology. My research lies at the intersection of these and critical heritage studies, memory studies, and visual and material culture studies. I am interested in the dynamic relationship between the pasts and futures emerging via the narratives created and communicated through space, built environment, material culture, and image and manifest in policy and management practices. I explore through the lens of heritage and memory how people have thought about their lifetime and agency in the context of past and future, how they have decided what they wish to leave behind and how they want to be remembered. In my PhD research and a series of publications growing out of that, I have addressed these questions by analyzing funerary culture and the material and visual culture of death. For the past five years, I have studied built heritage and its adaptive reuse in the framework of EU-funded international collaborative projects. I have focused on case studies and policies in Hungary, Romania, and Poland, from a European comparative perspective. I seek to understand how heritage defined in the above terms, can be a resource for societies that go through crises and structural changes, such as the material and immaterial legacy of the industrial past in post-Socialist countries.

Current and past collaborative research projects where I participated as a researcher:

2021- : CONSIDER: Sustainable Management of Industrial Heritage as a Resource for Urban Development. H2020 MSCA RISE project, ID: 101008186.

2019-2022: SensiClass: Tackling Sensitive Topics in Classroom. Erasmus+ project, ID: 2019-1-EE01-KA203-051690.

2019-2022: Periodization in the History of Art and its Conundrums: How to Tackle Them in East-Central Europe. New Europe College-Institute for Advanced Study in Bucharest. Getty Foundation.

2018-2022: OpenHeritage. Promoting and Enabling Heritage Re-Use through Inclusion, Technology, Access, Governance and Empowerment. H2020 Research and Innovation Action, ID: 776766. (Task leader)

2017-2022: Integrating Families: Children and the Stepfamily in the Kingdom of Hungary (16–19th Centuries). Research project run by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, supported by the Mobility (Lendület) Scheme

2020-2021: From Burden to Resource: Industrial Heritage in Central-Eastern Europe. Visegrad Fund (PI)

2012-2013: Funerary Monuments from the Transylvanian Principality. Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Isabel and Alfred Bader Research Grant in Art History, individual grant

2008-2009: Discovering the Archaeologists of Europe. Funded by the Leonardo da Vinci Programme of EU (Hungarian PI)

You can meet me as the module leader and instructor of three modules in the Museum Studies postgraduate program:

MCH 8610 - Working with Collections, Communities, and Archives in Museums

MCH 8550 - Producing Curatorial Projects for Museum Audiences

MCH 8599 - Research Dissertation

• Articles

  • Mérai, D, Kulikov, V. The Uses of Corporate Heritage: A Critical Approach. Heritage and Society 2024.
  • Merai D, Kulikov V. Ruin heritage and its reuse: the case of ruin bars in Budapest. Journal of Cultural Heritage Management and Sustainable Development 2024, 14(1), 15-32.
  • Mérai D, Veldpaus L, Pendlebury J, Kip M. The Governance Context for Adaptive Heritage Reuse: A Review and Typology of Fifteen European Countries. The Historic Environment: Policy and Practice 2022, 13(4), 526-546.
  • Mérai D, Veldpaus L. Heritage-Based Post-War Urban Reconstruction in Ukraine: Preparing Future Experts in Higher Education. The Journal of V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University. Series: History 2022, 62, 262-271.
  • Mérai D. Memories Carved in the Wall. A 16th-Century Type of Funerary Monuments in Transylvania. Hungarian Archaeology 2021, 10(1), 41-49.
  • Mérai, D. 'This Single Slab of Marble Does Not Show You One Single Face' Funerary Monuments from the Saint Michael Cathedral in Alba Iulia from the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Acta Historiae Artium 2020, 61, 81-148.
  • Laszlovszky, J, Mérai, D, Szabó, B, Vargha, M. The ‘Glass Church’ in the Pilis Mountains. The Long and Complex History of an Árpád Period Village Church. Hungarian Archaeology 2014, (1).
  • Mérai, D. Digging for Ethnicity – Perspectives in Archaeological Research. Annual of Medieval Studies at CEU 2011, 17, 139-151.
  • Merai, D, Veldpaus, L, Pendlebury, J, Kip, M. The Governance Context for Adaptive Heritage Reuse: A Review and Typology of Fifteen European Countries. The Historic Environment: Policy & Practice 2022, 13(4), 526-546.

• Authored Books

  • Mérai, D. Az emlékezet mesterei. Az Apafi család síremléke és az erdélyi szász kőfaragás a 17. században. Budapest: Martin Opitz, 2024.
  • Mérai, D. “The True and Exact Dresses and Fashion” Archaeological Clothing Remains and their Social Contexts in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-century Hungary . Oxford: BAR, 2010. In Press.

• Book Chapters

  • Merai D. Scholarship in Fragments – Research on Medieval Sculpture in Hungary. In: Hale, M; Lindley, P, ed. Nationalism, Medievalism and the Study of English Sculpture: Prior & Gardner's Account Reassessed. Donington: Shaun Tyas, 2023, pp.119-138.
  • Merai D, Veldpaus L. Heritage and Planning in Post-War Redevelopment. In: Breddels, L; Tetyana, O; Treffers, F, ed. Urban Coalition for Ukraine: Strategies and Proposals. Berlin: DOM Publishers, 2023, pp.162-164.
  • Mérai D, Fava F, Veldpaus L. Adaptive Heritage Reuse: Mapping Policies and Regulations’. In: H. Oevermann et al. (eds), ed. Open heritage: community-driven adaptive reuse in Europe: best practice. Basel: Birkhäuser, 2023, pp.180–189.
  • Mérai D. Tudósportrék humanista hagyománya az Erdélyi Fejedelemségben (Humanist tradition of scholars’ portraits in the Transylvanian Principality). In: Gulyás B; Mikó Á; Ugry B, ed. Magyarországi reneszánsz és barokk. Tanulmányok Galavics Géza tiszteletére (Renaissance and Baroque in Hungary. Festschrift for Géza Galavics). Budapest: MTA BTK, 2022, pp.123-140.
  • Mérai D, Kulikov V. From Burden to Resource: Uses of Industrial Heritage in East-Central Europe. Introduction. In: Mérai D; Sidó Zs; Szemző H; Kulikov V, ed. From Burden to Resource: Uses of Industrial Heritage in East-Central Europe. Budapest: Archaeolingua, 2021, pp.5-12.
  • Mérai, D. Halál, érzelmek és család a 16–17. századi Erdélyben. A síremlékek mint az érzelmek történetének forrásai (Death, emotions, and memory in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Transylvania. Funerary monuments as sources for the history of emotions). In: Erdélyi, G, ed. Érzelmek és mostohák - Mozaikcsaládok a régi Magyarországon. Budapest: MTA Történettudományi Intézet, 2019, pp.57-90.
  • Mérai, D. Stones in Floors and Walls: Commemorating the Dead in the Transylvanian Principality. In: Dumitran, D; Rotar, M, ed. Places of Memory: Cemeteries and Funerary Practices throughout the Time. Alba Iulia: Mega, 2015, pp.151-174.
  • Merai D. Funeral Monuments from the Transylvanian Principality in the Face of the Reformation. In: Vainovski-Mihai, I, ed. New Europe College Yearbook 2014. Bucharest: New Europe College, 2015, pp.201-237.
  • Merai D. Gregorio di Lorenzo, Frammento di rilievo terracotta. In: Farbaky, P; Pócs, D; Spekner, E; Végh, A; Scudieri, M; Brunori, L, ed. Mattia Corvino e Firenze. Arte e Umanesimo alla corte del re di Ungheria. Florence: Giunti, 2013, pp.134-135.
  • Kulcsár, V, Mérai, D. Roman or Barbarian? Provincial Models in a Sarmatian Pottery Center on the Danube Frontier. In: Dobrzanska, H; De Sena, E, ed. The Roman Empire and Beyond: Archaeological and Historical Research on the Romans and Native Cultures in Central Europe. Oxford: BAR, 2011, pp.61-80. In Preparation.
  • Istvánovics, E, Kulcsár, V, Mérai, D. Roman Age Barbarian Pottery Workshops in the Great Hungarian Plain. In: Bemmann, J; Hegewisch, M; Schmauder, M, ed. Drehscheibentöpferei im Barbaricum. Technologietransfer und Professionalisierung eines Handwerks am Rande des Römischen Imperiums. Akten der Internationalen Tagung in Bonn vom 11. bis 14. Juni 2009. Bonn: Vor- und Frühgeschichtliche Archäologie, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität, 2011, pp.355-369.
  • Bartosiewicz, L, Mérai, D, Csippán, P. Dig up – Dig in: Practice and Theory in Hungarian Archaeology. In: Lozny, L, ed. Archaeologies. A Comparative view on the Science of the Past. New York: Springer, 2011, pp.273-337.

• Edited Book

  • Mérai D, Sidó Zs, Szemző H, Kulikov V, ed. From Burden to Resource: Uses of Industrial Heritage in East-Central Europe. Budapest: Archaeolingua, 2021.

• Online Publication

  • Mérai D. Heritage in War: A Key to Define the Future of Ukraine. Budapest: CEU Democracy Institute, 2023. Available at: https://revdem.ceu.edu/2023/03/28/heritage-in-war-a-key-to-define-the-future-of-ukraine/.

• Reports

  • Mérai D, Miah J, Nasya B, Szemző H. Collaborative heritage reuse : Enabling strong partnerships. OpenHeritage, 2021. Policy Brief.
  • Mérai, D. Romania. In: Mapping of current heritage re-use policies and regulations in Europe. Complex policy overview of adaptive heritage re-use. OpenHeritage. Promoting and Enabling Heritage Re-Use through Inclusion, Technology, Access, Governance and Empowerment. H2020 Research and Innovation Action, ID: 776766. 2018- 2022. 2019.
  • Mérai, D. Hungary. In: Mapping of current heritage re-use policies and regulations in Europe. Complex policy overview of adaptive heritage re-use. OpenHeritage. Promoting and Enabling Heritage Re-Use through Inclusion, Technology, Access, Governance and Empowerment. H2020 Research and Innovation Action, ID: 776766. 2018- 2022. 2019.

• Reviews

  • Mérai D. Gantner, Eszter, Corinne Geering, and Paul Vickers, eds. Heritage Under Socialism: Preservation in Eastern and Central Europe, 1945-1991. New York: Berghahn, 2021. Pp. 254. Austrian History Yearbook 2023, 54, 273-274.
  • Mérai, D. Commemorating the Polish Renaissance Child. Funeral Monuments and their European Context. Edited by JEANNIE ŁABNO. Farnham: Ashgate. 2011. 457 pp., £25.00 (hardback). ISBN 978-0-7546-6825-1. Childhood in the Past: An International Journal 2011, 6(2), 140-141.