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Research areas: Cold War, Détente, East–West relations, Hungary’s and the Soviet Bloc’s international relations, Political transition in East Central Europe, European integration

Csaba Békés, Ph.D., Doctor of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. He is Professor of History at Corvinus University, a recurring visiting professor at Columbia University in New York and the founding director of the Cold War History Research Center (www.coldwar.hu). He is a contributor of the three volume The Cambridge History of the Cold War (2010). His numerous books include The 1956 Hungarian Revolution. A history in documents. (Co-ed., CEU Press, 2002); Soviet Occupation of Romania, Hungary, and Austria 1944/45–1948/49 (Co-ed., CEU Press, 2015) and Hungary’s Cold War: International Relations from the End of World War II to the Fall of the Soviet Union (University of North Carolina Press, 2022). In 2022 he received the Academic Prize for the best monograph in social sciences from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

Research areas: European integration, security studies, UK and Commonwealth countries

Zoltán Gálik’s research focuses on European integration, European and Transatlantic security, and the United Kingdom. Between 2009 and 2014, he served as a Senior Research Fellow at the Hungarian Institute of International Affairs, and from 2000 to 2007 at the Teleki László Institute, Centre for Foreign Policy Studies. He leads the Task Force on Disarmament and Non-Proliferation at the Corvinus University, part of the EU Non-Proliferation and Disarmament Consortium.

Research areas: International Criminal Law, International Crimes in Domestic Law, People’s Right to Self-determination, Lawfare

Tamás Hoffmann, PhD, is Associate Professor at Corvinus University of Budapest and Senior Research Fellow at the ELTE Centre for Social Sciences, Institute for Legal Studies. He obtained his law degree from the ELTE Budapest Faculty of Law and an LLM in Public International Law from King’s College London. He received his PhD in Public International Law from the ELTE Faculty of Law and a Diploma in International Humanitarian Law from the International Committee of the Red Cross. He was an intern at the Appeal Section of the Office of Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in 2004 and has lectured in international law at various institutions, including the NATO Defense College in Rome. He has published extensively in various areas of public international law, with a particular focus on international humanitarian law and international criminal law. His current research focuses on the influence of international criminal law on national criminal law norms and the impact of international law on the jurisprudence of the Hungarian People’s Tribunals.

Ágnes Kemenszky obtained her Ph.D. in 2013 from the university’s Multidisciplinary Doctoral School of International Relations, with her doctoral dissertation examining international territorial administration models in the Balkans, specifically Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo. In addition to her academic career, Ágnes Kemenszky has practical experience as an election observer and supervisor for international organisations such as the OSCE, EU and IOM in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo and Ukraine between 1997 and 2004.

Zoltan Kelemen has degrees in Medieval History and International Relations. He was guest lecturer at Durham University (UK) in 2015, the University of Alberta in Edmonton (Canada) in 2016, Central European University (Hungary) in 2018 and Charles University in Prague (Czech Republic) in 2022. In 2022, he was Fulbright Scholar at the University of Pittsburgh where he was instructing the David C. Frederick Honors College Course ‘Rule of Law and Democracy in Europe’. In 2023, he was Eötvös scholar at Ludwig-Maximilian University’s Project House Europe in Munich focusing his research on a longue durée analysis of the sovereignist tendencies of east central Europe.

Research areas Economics of European integration, challenges facing the policies of the European Union, reform of the EU budget, the role of cohesion policy in catching up

Ákos Kengyel graduated in Economics (specialisation in European Studies) in 1993. In 2018 he was appointed full professor at the Department of International Relations. He has been awarded funding from the European Commission’s Jean Monnet programme several times, in 2014 he set up a Jean Monnet Chair. He successfully applied for establishing a Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence in 2024. He took part in several Tempus, Phare, Erasmus and CEEPUS funded international projects. He is member of the International Expert Committee of Postgraduate and Doctoral Scholarship Programme of the

International Visegrad Fund (IVF) and elected member of the International and Development Studies Committee of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

Adrienne Komanovics earned her LLB and LLM from PTE, followed by an LLM in Community Legal Order from the University of Essex, UK. She obtained her PhD in 2007 and has been teaching at Corvinus University of Budapest since 2015. Her teaching portfolio includes International Law, European Union Law, Human Rights Law, and various other legal courses. With three decades of experience teaching in English, she has also contributed to a joint degree program with Middlesex University, London. As part of the Erasmus teaching staff mobility program, she has visited several universities in the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, Spain, and Croatia.

Éva Ignáth Kőváriné received her Ph.D. from the Corvinus Doctoral School of International Relations in 2010. Éva has been actively involved in the Erasmus+-funded FoRMAtion project (one of the aims of which was curriculum development) and is now participating in a Horizon Europe project entitled RM Framework.

Research areas: Human Rights, Illiberalism, Youth Resistance Movements, Transitional Justice

Eszter Kirs has been lecturing on international law and human rights at various academic institutions. Eszter Kirs was a legal officer of the Hungarian Helsinki Committee in 2013-2021. From 2010 to 2015, she worked for a defense team at the ICTY. She was a Fulbright visiting researcher at the Columbia Law School in 2009-2010 and a visiting lecturer at the University of Minnesota Law School in 2019. Eszter is the author of two monographs and academic papers on transitional justice, international criminal law and human rights, including her recent publications “Framing of Hungarian Youth Resistance Movements by Pro-Government Media under the Illiberal Orbán Governments” (Journal of Illiberalism Studies, 2024) and “Historical reflection as a source of inspiration for youth resistance in illiberal regimes – a qualitative study of the FreeSZFE movement in Hungary” (Journal of Youth Studies, 2025).

Research areas: Populism and IR, foreign relations of Latin American states, regional cooperation

Bernadett Lehoczki received her MA in Economics (2003) and her PhD in Political Science (Multidisciplinary International Relations) from the Corvinus University of Budapest in 2009. Her research interests and teaching focus on Latin America’s place in the international system and regionalism in Latin America. More recently, she has begun to focus on a comparative analysis of Latin America and Central Eastern Europe, particularly with regard to the foreign policy consequences of populism.

Research areas: International Security, Non-Traditional Security Issues, Foreign Policy Decision-Making

Péter Marton is Associate Professor at the Department of International Relations. Editor-in-chief and author of The Palgrave Handbook of Non-State Actors in East-West Relations and coeditor and author of The Palgrave Encyclopaedia of Global Security Studies. His fields of research include Security Studies, Foreign Policy Analysis and Global Public Health.

Dr. Tamás Matura, Ph.D. is a Non-resident Senior Fellow of CEPA Washington, he is the founder of the Central and Eastern European Center for Asian Studies and has served as an adviser on China to the Minister of National Economy. He is an Associate Professor at the Corvinus University of Budapest and lecturer at ESSCA School of Management Angers-Paris-Budapest-Shanghai.

Research areas: Food Sovereignty, Bioregional Planning, Social-ecological Systems

Dorottya Mendly received her Phd from Corvinus University in 2020. She teaches subjects related to global governance and social-environmental issues on the global agenda. Her research focuses on political ecology, food systems research and bioregional planning. She is currently the co-coordinator of the research project “Increasing Resilience through Bioregional Planning in the Sand Ridge” (2024-2027).

Research areas: China, International Migration, Nationalism

Nyíri Pál’s research interests include international migration from China and its role in the relationship between Chinese society and the world, as well as Asian immigration and xenophobia in Eastern Europe. His most recent books are Reporting for China: How Chinese Correspondents Work with the World and, edited with Danielle Tan, Chinese Encounters in Southeast Asia: How Money, People, and Ideas from China Are Shaping a Region. His current research focuses on Chinese lifestyle migration to Europe; labour relations at Chinese-owned companies in Europe; and Asian labour in Eastern Europe. Before joining the university, Nyíri taught at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam and Macquarie University in Sydney.

Research areas: armed conflicts, non-state armed groups, rebel governance, post-conflict state-building

Buyisile Ntaka is a PhD candidate and assistant lecturer in the Department of International Relations at Corvinus University of Budapest. She holds an MA in International Relations from Corvinus University and a Master of Social Science in Sociology from the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa. Her teaching focuses on sub-Saharan Africa, while her research explores armed conflicts, insurgencies, rebel governance and state-building.

Research areas: International Development, Humanitarian Cooperation, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict and the Impact of Digital Transformation in these domains

Beáta Paragi earned her MA in Economic Science (2003) and PhD in Political Science (Multidisciplinary International Relations) at Corvinus University in Budapest in 2008, and additionally holds a MA-degree in ICT Law from the University of Oslo (2022). Over the years she was a visiting researcher at Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Israel), Fafo Research Foundation and the University of Oslo (Norway). Her research interests and teaching focus on development and humanitarian studies, the digital dimension of aid work in the context of migration (Bolyai-scholarship 2024-2027) and Israeli-Palestinian relations.

A military historian and political scientist by training, András Rácz defended his Ph.D. in Modern History at the Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest in 2008. He is specialized on researching foreign, security and defense policies of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. Since the beginning of the full-scale Russian aggression against Ukraine, he has been focusing mostly on analyzing events of the war, by conducting also frequent field trips to Ukraine. Between 2014 and 2016 he worked at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs, before that he was visiting researcher at the Transatlantic Academy of the German Marshall Fund. He successfully completed a János Bolyai Research Fellowship, as well as several other research projects. In addition to the Corvinus University of Budapest, he also works at the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP) in Berlin.

Research areas: Small states and the Transformation of the global order, Middle Eastern geopolitics, Gulf Studies, the Crisis in Gaza

Máté Szalai obtained his PhD in Political Science (International Relations) at Corvinus University of Budapest. In addition to his academic career, he works as a policy researcher at the Dutch Clingendael Institute. His primary research fields include international relations in the Middle East and the Gulf region and the foreign policy of small states. After he completed his doctoral degree, he was a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Cofund Fellow at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice (2022-2024) and a visiting fellow at Columbia University (2021) and Tel Aviv University (2023-2024).

Research areas: French foreign policy and the Francophone region; Theories of International Relations; Critical Discourse Analysis; Hungarian Foreign Policy

Anita Szűcs received her MA in Economics in 2002 and her PhD in Political Science (Multidisciplinary International Relations) from Corvinus University of Budapest in 2007. She researches and teaches French foreign policy and international political theory at the BA, MA, and PhD levels. She was a member of the French research group at the Institute for Foreign Affairs and Trade and later joined the French research group at the University of Public Service within the KÖFOP project (2016–2018), both led by Ferenc Gazdag. Her current research focuses on the “Christian Europe” narrative in Hungarian foreign policy through a Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA) and on contemporary developments in French foreign policy.

Research areas: Muslims in Europe, Multicultural cohabitation in Europe, Politics in the Maghreb region, Post-Secular politics and religious governance, Religion and the state

Dr. Dániel Vékony, a Senior Lecturer, earned his Ph.D. in International Relations from Corvinus University in 2017. Dr. Vékony’s research focuses on Islam and Muslims in Europe, multicultural coexistence, collective memory, and church-state relations in post-secular environments. He is also interested in the Meghreb region, Hungary’s relations with the MENA region and sports diplomacy. He has contributed to the Horizon 2020 project “Radicalisation, Secularism and the Governance of Religion: Bringing together European and Asian Perspectives (GREASE).” His recent publications include “Governance of Religious Diversity in Central Europe: A Religious Nationalism Inspired Illiberal Turn in Hungary and Slovakia?” (2023) and “Dynamics in StateReligion Relations in Postcommunist Central Eastern Europe and Russia” (2022).

Christopher is a trained historian and political scientist and has worked at Corvinus University of Budapest since 2005. Christopher has published on the EU integration efforts of Central and East European states, on sub-regional cooperation formats (e.g. the Visegrad Group or the EU Strategy for the Danube region), and on ongoing debates of EU integration of the Western Balkan states.

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Professor Emerita Erzsébet Kaponyi has been a lecturer at Corvinus University and its predecessor institutions for several decades. She has taught at several European universities, from the Sorbonne Paris III to La Sapienza University in Rome, and has worked as an expert in several international organisations (UN, Council of Europe, EU), and is still active as an independent expert for the European Commission.