Robert Parnica

Robert Parnica is the Senior Reference Archivist at the Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives, Central European University, Budapest.

Parnica graduated in history and archeology from the History Department and the Department of Archeology at the University of Zagreb. He completed an M.A. degree in History, and later earned an M.Phil. Degree in comparative history of South East Europe at Central European University in Budapest. In the fall 2020, Robert began a Doctoral Studies Program in Archival Science at Alma Mater Europaea in Maribor. He is a practicing archivist with more than twenty years of experience at Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives (OSA) at Central European University. His main expertise lies in overseeing the daily reference services at the Archives, designing, and implementing outreach activities across the Central European University and beyond. His professional interest covers themes such as collaborative and participatory archival practice, digital curation, as well as the cultural and anthropological positioning of archives today vis-à-vis society. He has been supervising processing, curation, and visualization various archival materials from the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty collections relating to East, South East and Central Europe during the Cold War such as the Background and Situation Reports, the Free Europe Committee but also materials of OMRI (Open Media Research Institute from Prague), and some others.