Project details

Project: 101068320 — IMEI — HORIZON-MSCA-2021-PF-01
Host institution: Eötvös Loránd University,  Eötvös Loránd Tudományegyetem (ELTE), Faculty of Social Sciences, Budapest, Hungary
Project supervisor: Professor Antal Örkény
Project start date: October 1st, 2022
Project end date: September 30th, 2024

Project summary

An important element of social cohesion and contact between majorities and sub-state ethnic minorities are intermarriages, which are either welcomed as vehicles easing the tensions between nations and sub-state minorities or criticized as important drivers of assimilation and the ‘destroyers’ of ethnic minority communities. The social aspects, family dynamics and identity construction of family members in intermarriages were not studied methodically in CEE and the WB. Therefore, the goal of the Intermarriage and Ethnic Identity (IMEI) project is to analyse the social implications of intermarriages between members of ethnic minority communities and the majority nations in Vojvodina, the multi-ethnic region of Serbia. The IMEI project will contribute to the state-of-the-art by analysing the social impacts of intermarriages on three levels, namely the individual (micro), the family (meso) and the societal (macro) in a significantly multi-ethnic geographic region. On the individual level the project will examine ethnic and cultural identity transformations undergone by partners in intermarriages. On the family level we will explore the processes of intergenerational transfer of ethnic, religious, and cultural markers. On the societal level the project will investigate the workings of the relevant and quite modern ethnic minority policies and legal framework of Serbia and their impact on intermarriages. This research is relevant in the wider European context as well, as we will specifically target the Hungarian, Slovak and Romanian ethnic minorities living in Vojvodina, whose kin-states (Hungary, Slovakia, Romania) are members of the European Union, whose members often have dual Serbian and EU citizenship and are therefore subject to the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities and European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, the European Union’s key policies for the protection of (its) minorities.

Intermarriage and Ethnic Identity logo design: Attila Kapitány, Associate Professor, University of Novi Sad, Serbia

The web page of the project

About the researcher

Karolina Lendák-Kabók, PhD holds an Assistant Professorship at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Novi Sad, Serbia. She earned her BA (2010) and MA (2012) degrees at the Faculty of Law  and her PhD in Gender Studies (2019) at the Center for Gender Studies, University of Novi Sad, Serbia. She was the coordinator of the University Centre for Interdisciplinary and Multidisciplinary Studies and Research – UCIMSI in the October 2021 to September 2022 period when she temporarily  stepped down to start her Maria Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship (2022-2024). The focus of her research is the position of ethnic minorities, language barrier, gender differences in academia and ethnic intermarriages. She published a book titled:  Ethnic Minorities in Serbian Academia – the Role of Gender and Language Barrier, Palgrave Macmillian (2022). She edited a book of essays of ethnic minority Hungarian women living in Serbia titled: Üvegplafon? (Eng. titile: Glass ceiling?), Forum 2020. Karolina was awarded the “Anđelka Milić“ Award for enhancing gender equality at the University of Novi Sad (2022), and the Crystal Ball Award (2017) for an outstanding scientific contribution of a young scholar. In 2014, she received a “National Excellence” scholarship in Hungary and was part of the Hungarian three-year-long “Collegium Talentum” research scholarship program (2013 – 2016) for gifted ethnic Hungarian students living outside the Hungarian border. She was a visiting researcher at the Central European University (Budapest, Hungary) in 2015, at the University of Sydney (Australia) in 2016, at the Université Paris-Est Créteil (Paris, France) in 2018 and the at University of Lausanne (Switzerland) also in 2018 and Purdue University (USA) in October 2021. She was an invited speaker at the Sociology Department, Graduate School of Letters, Kyoto University, Japan in March, 2019. In 2019 during the winter semester, she was an external researcher at ELTE, Faculty of Social Sciences, Budapest, Hungary with a scholarship awarded by the “Délvidékért Kiss” Fund. She authored or co-authored more than 40 journal and/or conference papers. Karolina is a mother of three underaged children.

Karolina will be teaching two courses in the 2022/23 fall semester at the Institute of Political and International Studies: Vegyes házasságok a globalizált társadalmakban (in Hungarian); Intermarriages in the fabric of globalised societies (in English).
Emial: karolina.kabok@tatk.elte.hu
Office: 2.74

ELTE Promising Researcher Award

Karolina Lendák-Kabók was awarded the ELTE Promising Researcher Award on the 24th of November, 2023, for her project titled Intermarriage and Ethnic Identity.  More details and her introduction video in English can be found here.

A video interview, which was made in the award ceremony, can be found here with Karolina Lendák-Kabók.

Events related to the Project

• Open Lecture titled "Social impact of intermarriage: integration, acculturation, or assimilation of minority communities?"

• Project presentation and guest lecture

• Martin Klatt's (European Centre for Minority Issues) guest lecture

  • The abstract of the lecture

• Presentation in the New York Convention of the Association of the Nationalities Studies (ASN)

  • The abstract of the paper 

  • The program of the convention can be found here

• Twin panel titled "Inherent Dynamics of Intermarriages in Europe" within the ASN Europe 2023 conference in Cluj-Napoca

  • The abstract of the paper

  • The program of the conference can be find here 

• BrownBag Seminare in the University of Graz (Centre for Southeast European Studies): "Intermarriage and Ethnic Identity in Central and Eastern Europe"

  • Brownbag Seminare – Aktuelle Forschung zu Südosteuropa

  • The abstract of the lecture

• Guest lecture titled Multiculturalism in Vojvodina: Cultural Autonomy and Mixedness at the Ethnopolitical Conflict Course at the School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Edinburgh

  • The PPT of the lecture

• Mixed Marriages and Identity Choices in the German-Danish Border Region – international workshop 

  • The programme of the workshop

  • Karolina's lecture (ppt)

• Karolina Lendák-Kabók: National Minorities in Serbian Academia: The Role of Gender and Language Barriers (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022) - virtual booklaunch on the 24th of January, 2024

• Minority Rights and Intermarriage in Central and Eastern Europe – presentation at the Center for Global Studies, University of Victoria, Canada on the 28th of February, 2024

  • The abstract of her talk

  • You can access the edited video recording here

Publications related to the Project

• The Yugoslav War that was not theirs: The case of national minority millennials – open acces study in Nations and Nationalism (Q/1 periodical)

• Impact of language ideologies on educational choices in intermarriages – study in Ethnicities (Q/1 periodical)
• War veterans, minorities and crisis points in Yugoslav welfare – open acces study in European Review of History: Revue européenne d'histoire (Q/1 periodical)