Anna Szakál, researcher at the Folklore Department of the Institute of Ethnology of the Research Center for the Humanities, studies the early period of collecting Transylvanian folk poetry (1830s–1860s): the networks of intellectuals taking part in it, the daily life of the Unitarian lower clergy and their contemporary social-cultural activity, and the influence of Protestant colleges. She is also interested in the use and publication of ego-documents which create new opportunities in the research of the history of science. Szakál has been working at the Archives of the Institute of Ethnology since 2021, where together with János Bednárik she developed the new structure of the archives. Also, in cooperation with her colleagues, they started (re)arranging the materials and developed a new concept for expanding the collection.

As an ARP ambassador, Szakál wants to assess the possibilities offered by the ARP repository to the Archives and the Institute of Ethnology, her primary concern being how to store the research materials generated by the researchers in an orderly manner. She selected two data sets to be reposited as an experiment. One belongs to the HAS Estonian–Hungarian bilateral project entitled Global and local elements in contemporary folklore in Hungary and Estonia, led by Katalin Vargha, a goal of which is to identify good practices for archiving and making the results of a collection of contemporary folklore texts referenceable. The other goal of the same project is to place the legacy of a famous folklorist, Tekla Dömötör in the data repository. This legacy, which is already in an orderly state, includes photographs, correspondence, collections, and other professional materials.