Student profile : Enikö Zöller

I studied urban studies at the Bauhaus University Weimar, Germany, specialising in urban preservation. Here, I started exploring the controversies around urban heritage, monuments, and the politics of remembrance—topics that remain central to my research interests. Unlike the conventional approach in preservation, which emphasises the ‘exceptional’, ‘unique’, and ‘outstanding’, my focus was on the serial and mass-produced structures that repeat and represent cities and their histories.

For my bachelor’s thesis, I analysed a simple yet widely prevalent bench typology from 1920s Hungary—a bench I spent my childhood on. My research explored how the focus on the exceptional as a value has evolved in art history and heritage designation and how it shapes our understanding of urban spaces. Starting with the bench as a mass-produced and serial artefact, I identified inherent limitations within heritage theory, driving a series of fundamental questions.

After completing my degree at the Bauhaus, I wanted to understand how heritage preservation rationales play out across various levels of governance—international, national, regional, and local. GLM Master's programme offered diverse courses that pushed me to apply theories, mechanisms, maps, situated information, expert vocabularies, and causal chains to analyse new situations and unstudied cases, fueling my long-standing interests. For instance, in the seminar 'Housing and Land', we discussed the financialisation of policy instruments regulating floor space in Mumbai. Although empirical details are context-specific, the mechanisms identified can be extended to other cities. Similarly, in the course 'Nature of Disaster’, we unpacked the history of various disasters, which were all rooted in long-term processes: slow accumulations of causes leading to a breaking point, followed by long-term consequences. Seeing policy and planning as long-term processes provides valuable insights across various fields of study.

Building on my interest in heritage designation and the notion of the 'outstanding’ developed in my bachelor’s thesis, I took a two-fold approach in my dissertation, which was supervised by Prof. Sukriti Issar. I examined the operation of the 1972 UNESCO World Heritage Convention, analysing its mechanisms and criteria that uphold the notion of the ‚outstanding‘. Simultaneously, I showcased an urban site in Mumbai, exemplifying a serial typology integral to the city’s built structure and history. Focusing on a homegrown neighbourhood added complexity. What is the heritage of “Asia’s largest” and supposedly “quintessential  slum”?  Who and in what manner wields the right to define what constitutes heritage, and how does that connect to other agendas? 

To examine the history and current form of the live-work typologies of entrepreneurial homegrown neighbourhoods, I conducted two months of fieldwork in Mumbai, alongside an internship at urbz, an action-research collective based in Dharavi. Additionally, I worked at the Nominations Unit of the UNESCO World Heritage Centre, preparing background documents for the Open-Ended Working Group of State Parties addressing issues of representativity and balance on the World Heritage List. At the World Heritage Centre, I gained insights into the operation of the 1972 World Heritage Convention, understanding the institutional political economies and intricate power networks underpinning heritage designations and what is overlooked, acknowledged, and celebrated by the nation-states influencing and being influenced by the World Heritage Paradigm.

Starting in October, I will begin my PhD with the German Research Foundation (DFG) Training Group “Societal Transformation and Spatial Materialisation of Housing”. My research will explore path-dependency in housing regimes in Hungary from socialism to the present, focusing on the authoritarian populist Orbán regime. The examination of serial housing typologies and instrumentalisation of the ‚everyday’ remains my main focus. I am very much looking forward to this next step.