Lecturers from the Faculty of Central European Studies Presented at an International Conference of Slavic Studies

Between 2–4 June 2025, the 6th edition of the international Slavic congress GranaSlavic was held at the University of Granada, organized by the Departmental Section of Slavic Philology and the Centre for Slavic Cultures.

Over the years, the GranaSlavic conference has become one of the most significant international forums for researchers in various branches of Slavic studies. This year, nearly 300 presenters from numerous countries participated across five thematic sections, sharing the latest findings from their scholarly and research activities. The opening of the conference was followed by a keynote lecture from the renowned Russian author Mikhail Shishkin, residing in Switzerland. In his lecture titled From Russian Literature to Literature in Russian, he emphasized the role of Russian-speaking writers in exile in shaping contemporary Russian literature. He critically addressed the current Russian regime’s cultural policy and drew parallels between the political, cultural, and literary context of Nazi Germany and that of present-day Russia.

The Faculty of Central European Studies was represented at the conference by Professor Ildikó Vančo, Associate Professor István Kozmács, and second-year PhD student Anna Oros Bugár, who all contributed as presenters.

Their participation was part of the two-year project of the faculty aimed at improving the training of future teachers of Slovak as a second language. They contributed with two presentations to the English-language section titled Didactics of Slavic Languages. As the first step of the project Preparation of Future Teachers of Slovak Language and Slovak Literature for Educational Practice in Schools with Hungarian as the Language of Instruction, a nationwide survey was conducted during the 2024/25 academic year in lower primary grades of Hungarian-medium elementary schools in Slovakia.

In their presentation Is Teaching a State Language Teaching a Foreign Language? Rethinking Slovak Language Education for Minorities, Anna Oros Bugár and Ildikó Vančo introduced the project’s aims and presented the findings of the attitude survey focusing on young pupils’ perceptions of the Slovak language. Subsequently, in their presentation The Challenges of Teaching Slovak to the Hungarian Minority in Slovakia, Ildikó Vančo and István Kozmács summarized key insights drawn from the in-depth analysis of students’ written productions in Slovak language.

The two presentations were met with great interest from the audience, and the closing discussion of the session raised further questions regarding the status of linguistic minorities in Slovakia.

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