The Center for International Migration Studies (CIMS) was established at the Faculty of Humanities, University of Debrecen in 2012. Its stated mission was to bring together people doing research in the broadly defined field of migration studies, establishing an interdisciplinary research center that offers a forum for sharing results in publications and at conferences, integrating these into the teaching portfolio of the university, as well as facilitating the building of a research network related to various projects.
Members of the Center include scholars from fields as varied as history, sociology, cultural and literary studies, linguistics, area studies (most prominently American, Dutch, German, and Italian Studies), law, and geography. The Center has offered numerous university courses in Hungarian and in English in a great variety of topics, providing a better understanding of the past and present of international migration to hundreds of students. This was also accompanied by the first publication of the center in 2021 (Migráció tegnap és ma, eds. Réka Bozzay and László Pete), which related to numerous topics discussed in these courses and helped students gain a deeper understanding of the themes presented in lectures. To enhance international collaboration, several conferences have also been organized, most recently in 2024 on the 100th anniversary of the Johnson-Reed Immigration Act in the United States with scholars participating from twelve countries. In line with this, and as the next step, the Center now wishes to focus more on internationalization both in research and publication.
Previous directors of the center are Tibor Glant (secretary: István Kornél Vida), László Pete (secretary: Réka Bozzay), and Gábor Pusztai (secretary: Réka Bozzay). The current director is Balázs Venkovits (secretary: Zsuzsanna Lénárt-Muszka).