Aleksander Urkom

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• Aleksander Urkom

Aleksander Urkom
Born	Dr. habil. Aleksander Urkom December 26, 1976 Novi Sad, Yugoslavia
🏳️ Citizenship	Serbia / Hungary
💼 Occupation
Known for	Research in lexicography, identity studies, and comparative phraseology
🌐 Website	ELTE profile

Dr. habil. Aleksander Urkom (official page) (born December 26, 1976, in Novi Sad) is a Serbian–Hungarian linguist, university professor, and textbook author. He works at the Eötvös Loránd University (Faculty of Humanities, Bölcsészettudományi Kar) in Budapest, where he serves as the head of the Serbian language and literature program within the Institute of Slavic and Baltic Philology. His academic and research interests include lexicography, identity studies, corpus linguistics, sociolinguistics, and comparative phraseology.

Apart from his academic work, Aleksander Urkom is the director of the Balkan Heritage Cultural Center (Instagram), which has been actively operating in Budapest since 2024. The Center’s mission is to present the cultural heritage, arts, and contemporary creators of the Balkan region. Its activities are characterized by a multilingual, open, and inclusive approach, including literary evenings, book launches, film screenings, panel discussions, musical events, exhibitions, art workshops, language and culinary programs. The goal of the Center (Facebook) is to build bridges between different nationalities and communities, encourage dialogue, and promote cultural diversity.

Biography

Aleksander Urkom was born on December 26, 1976, in Novi Sad, Yugoslavia. He moved with his family to Hungary in 1992, and graduated from the Serbian High School "Nikola Tesla" in Budapest in 1995. He studied Serbian language and literature at the Faculty of Humanities of Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE) between 1995 and 2000, graduating with a thesis titled *Methods and Challenges in the Development of Multilingual Printed Dictionaries*.

He completed his doctoral studies in linguistics between 2000 and 2004 at the Doctoral School of Linguistic Sciences, specializing in Slavic Studies. In 2006, he defended his PhD dissertation on *The History of Serbian Orthography with Special Reference to the Marking of Vowel Length and Differential Phonological Analysis*. In 2021, he obtained the title of habilitated associate professor at the same university.

Academic career

Urkom began his university career in 2007 as an assistant in the Serbian Language and Literature program, later becoming an associate professor and head of the program. He teaches courses in phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, lexicology, stylistics, sociolinguistics, text linguistics, and the history of language and culture.

He has been involved in the development and modernization of academic curricula, including the creation of master's programs for teachers of Serbian language and national minorities, as well as a master’s program in Serbian as a foreign language. He has lectured at several foreign universities, including Charles University in Prague, Jagiellonian University in Kraków, University of Novi Sad, Educons University, University of Vienna, and University of Belgrade.

Research

His main research areas are lexicography, corpus linguistics, sociolinguistics, comparative phraseology, identity studies, and language pedagogy. He has published over fifty academic papers, two monographs, and several textbooks used in Serbian language teaching in Hungary and the region. His works have been published in Serbia, Hungary, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Poland, and Romania, in Serbian, Hungarian, and English. He has participated in numerous international Slavic conferences and represented ELTE University at the International Congress of Slavists held in Belgrade in 2018.

Publications

Urkom is the author and co-author of several textbooks and monographs:

• Kezdők szerb nyelvkönyve (with Helen Davies, Holnap Kiadó, Budapest, 2007)
• Szerb gyakorlati fonetika (Balassi Kiadó, Budapest, 2009)
• Business Serbian (Urkom Kiadó, Budapest, 2014)
• Jezička kompetencija i savremeno društvo (ELTE BTK, Budapest, 2017)
• Pešta, centar sveta (Pest, a világ közepe, Urkom Kiadó, Budapest, 2018)
• Serbian–Hungarian Lexicography (Categorization – Studies – Terminology) (ELTE BTK, Budapest, 2022)
• Hajde!: A szerb nyelvtan túlélőkalauza (Balkan Heritage Cultural Center, Budapest, 2025)

He is also the author of numerous scholarly articles on modern language usage, minority identity, and translation. His complete bibliography is available in the database of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences: MTMT profile.

In 2025, within the Balkan Heritage Cultural Center, he published a translation of the poetry collection by Serbian poet Dragan Bošković:

• Dragan Bošković – The Clash (Balkan Heritage Cultural Center, trans. by Aleksander Urkom translation team, Budapest, 2025).

Editorial and organizational work

Between 2010 and 2018, Urkom was the main organizer and editor of the International Conference of Young Slavists in Budapest – the first student Slavic conference in Hungary. He served as a member of the editorial boards of Bosnistika Plus and Bosanski jezik, and as a member of the program committee of the Contexts conference at the University of Novi Sad.

Projects and collaboration

From 2017 to 2021, he led the project *Hungarian–Serbian Dictionary*, the most extensive lexicographic project of its kind in Hungary, containing around 70,000 entries. The dictionary is available online at szotar.net. He has also participated in international cooperation and mobility programs (Erasmus+ and others), collaborating with universities in Belgrade, Novi Sad, Sarajevo, Kraków, and Prague.

Memberships and functions

• Head of the Serbian program at the Department of Slavic and Baltic Philology, ELTE
• Member of the Economic Committee of the Faculty of Humanities, ELTE (since 2015)
• Editorial board member of several academic journals and conference committees
• Project leader in international lexicographic initiatives

References

Category:Serbian linguists Category:Hungarian linguists Category:Eötvös Loránd University Category:1976 births Category:Living people

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