ZRC SAZU -- Institute for Slovenian Emigration Studies

Tel.: +386 1 4706485

Fax: +386 1 4257802

E-mail: Izi@zrc-sazu.si

HISTORY OF THE INSTITUTE FOR SLOVENIAN EMIGRATION STUDIES ZRC SAZU

The Institute for Slovenian Emigration studies at the Centre for Scientific Research of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts (ZRC SAZU - CSR of SASA) has been operating for twenty years now. It had two predecessors which strongly influenced its development, but 1986, the year it was incorporated into ZRC SAZU, was a turning point. That year saw the beginning of systematic employment of researchers from different disciplines, and thus a move to multidisciplinary research into emigration.

The first of the Institute's two predecessors was the Study Centre for the History of Slovenian Emigration at the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, founded in 1963. Until 1967 the Centre was run by academy member Fran Zwitter Ph.D., as an initiative committee without premises or stuff. At the end of the decade the work of the Study Centre halted. It was more than ten years later, in 1982, that its successor was founded. This was the Emigration Institute at the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, which also inherited part of the material collected by its predecessor. Until 1986 the Institute was headed by academy member Janez Stanonik Ph.D., who brought in a documentalist and a researcher/sociologist to help in the work. It was during this four-year period that the institute acquired the bulk of its current archive and periodical collections.

In the years following, the new Institute for Slovenian Emigration Studies ZRC SAZU employed nine persons. There are now ten: nine researchers and a specialist consultant. Directors of the Institute to date have been: Andrej Vovko Ph.D. (1987-1991), Janja Žitnik Ph.D. (1992-1994), Irena Gantar Godina ph.D. (1994-1999) and Marina Lukšič-Hacin Ph.D. (since 1999).

ARCHIVES AND LIBRARY

The institute has a manifold of archive collections (documents, letters, photographs and tapes), registered in A Guide through the Archival Documents of the Institute. It also has collections of emigrant periodicals available for the public in the Archival and Documentation Centre of the Institute. A separate lending library of the Institute holds resarch publications (monographs, proceedings and journals) on international migration, mostly acquired by means of regular book exchange, as well as a collection of literary works created by Slovenian emigrant writers.

RESEARCH AND PUBLICATIONS

The research efforts of the Institute focus on emigration processes nad organisation, and the cultural activites and acculturation problems of Slovenian emigrants. Over the cours of its history the Institute has published twenty-five monographs and bilingual proceedings, eighteen issues of Dve domovini/Two Homelands: Migration Studies (the main scholarly journal dealing with Slovenian emigration as well as with theoretical or methodological problems of interdisciplinary and comparative migration studies), and contributed over 1000 other bibliographic units, which constitute the core of the comprehensive result of Slovenian migration studies at large.

In 2001 the Institute established a monograph series titled Migracije - Migrations; the first three monograph volumes and two volumes of an international conference proceedings have been published so far. An informative Bilten/Newsletter which brings out annual reports on the Institute's activities, is regularly sent out to migration institutions in Slovenia and abroad.

CONFERENCES AND ROUND TABLES

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Copyright © 2000 Institute for Slovene Emigration Studies
Last modified: March 2001