• Title of the project: Regulyversum – Publishing the legacy of Antal Reguly
  • Duration of the project: November 1, 2021 – October 31, 2024
  • Principal investigator: Eszter Ruttkay-Miklián, Department of Non-European Studies, Institute of Ethnology, HUN-REN Research Centre for the Humanities
  • Project type: NKFIH K
  • Funding organization: National Research, Development and Innovation Office
  • Project number: K 143962

Antal Reguly (1819–1858), a scholar born in Zirc and a pioneer of research among Finno-Ugric peoples, carried out fundamental research. He collected linguistic and folklore materials, produced ethnographic notes, and sketched maps in Finland, Lapland, beyond the Ural Mountains, and among the peoples of the Volga region. During his travels of about 10 years, he devoted everything to scientific enquiry: he carried out his research at the cost of his health and his finances. Many of his notes have been left to posterity without translation or interpretation, as Antal Reguly died unexpectedly at the age of 39. Much of his legacy remains unpublished to this day. The project focuses on ego documents, i.e., Reguly's journals and correspondence.

The research began with the mapping and organization of Antal Reguly's legacy, and this inventory is valuable in its own right. With appropriate interpretations, this forms the basis of the documentation for the international recognition of Antal Reguly's intellectual legacy through the UNESCO Memory of the World program. There are also conservation implications of organizing the legacy: the manuscript material to be processed through this project will be digitized in the Department of Manuscripts and Rare Books at the Library and Information Centre of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Most of the sources are found there, as well as in the Museum of Ethnography in Budapest.

The most important elements of the workflow are the transliteration, translation, and annotation of the manuscripts. Metadata is created for processed manuscripts in a unified system, which can be used to search and organize the website (as well as the database behind it).

The collection includes both texts that had never been published and texts that had been translated and published in parts. It also includes a presentation of the collection of artifacts assembled by Reguly, as well as his cartographic and anthropological work. Publication helps to promote the researcher's oeuvre in Hungary and abroad and provides a basis for the mapping and evaluation of his career. Reguly's work is of interest beyond Hungarian scholarship, as he was often the first scholar to conduct professional research among the peoples he studied, thus the website is in Hungarian, German, and Russian, preserving the language of the sources.

As the final product of the project, Reguly’s legacy will be accessible on a multilingual website, and the findings of the research will be made available in the form of publications and exhibitions.