Research & projects
Major research areas
As one of the founding departments, sociology at Corvinus focused on major social problems from the very start. With current research spanning themes of youth and education (access to higher education, international student mobility); gendered labour markets (work-life balance, women in management); elites and cultural sociology; migration (global hierarchies, population discourse), religion & society; deviance (drugs and alcohol, suicide, risk behaviours) and artificial intelligence, our scholars take on society’s most current and relevant questions and examine them through methodological innovation, theoretical sophistication and scientific rigour.
Besides ongoing work in our thriving research centres, departmental workshops provide a venue through which graduate students and faculty present ongoing research and engage in discussion of methodological and substantive challenges in their work. The ISPS Seminar Series sees internationally respected scholars visiting us to give a lecture & share the latest in social science research.
MTA-BCE Social Epidemiology Research Unit
On 1 July 2019, the Social Epidemiology Research Group of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences – Corvinus University of Budapest was established under the leadership of Zsuzsa Elekes. The aim of the Research Group is – in the tradition of Rudolf Andorka – to conduct studies that contribute to the exploration and understanding of the social patterns, characteristics, causes and correlations of addictive health behaviours.
The Research Group’s own website: devianciakutas.hu
Centre for Gender and Culture
The aim of the Centre for Gender and Culture is to coordinate teaching and research activities on the topic of gender at Corvinus and to integrate our university into national and international academic networks on the topic.
The Centre aims to act as an intermediary between colleagues from different departments and units and from other higher education and research institutions both in Hungary and abroad. In this sense, the Centre aims to engage in international, inter-institutional and interdisciplinary activities while striving to include doctoral students and junior researchers alongside more senior colleagues working on related topics.
Head of the Research Centre: Dr. Beáta Nagy
Visions of artificial intelligence and society
OTKA Research K-131733
The aim of this project, funded by the National, Research, Development and Innovation Office, is to investigate visions of artificial intelligence. It is essential to investigate how these expectations shape the future and the present. Ideas about artificial intelligence are present at many levels of society, and we therefore consider it important to study the topic sociologically. In order to achieve our research objectives, we use both the traditional sociological interview method and specific futures research tools.
Rather than focusing social discourse on what the impact of technology will be, and seeing technological development as a kind of inevitable phenomenon outside of society that cannot be controlled, we believe it is important to address questions such as: how can technological development help to create a desirable future state? What does a desirable future state even look like? Who could and should have a say in the development of artificial intelligence and how?
The research project included interviews, scenario building and backcasting with AI experts from academia, business and the civil sector. We wanted to know what possible future scenarios these experts envision for the development of AI and what their preferred vision of the future is.
Below is a link to a few minutes of video as part of the Fair Work Future Emerald campaign, in which the head of the research explains some of the project’s main ideas:
Head of Research: Dr. Lilla Mária Vicsek (Associate Professor, Department of Sociology
Research participants: Dr. Alexandra Köves, Dr. Katalin Fehér, Ágnes Horváth, Dr. Tamás Tóth, Dr. Boglárka Herke, Dr. Tamás Bokor, Dr. Gyöngyvér Pataki, Dr. Roland Keszi, , interns
Main publications of the project so far:
Vicsek, L. (2021). Artificial intelligence and the future of work – lessons from the sociology of expectations, International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, Vol. 41 No. 7/8, pp. 842-861. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJSSP-05-2020-0174
Vicsek, L., Bokor, T. and Pataki, Gy. (2022). Younger generations’ expectations regarding artificial intelligence in the job market: Mapping accounts about the future relationship of automation and work, Journal of Sociology, OnlineFirst, 29 March, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/14407833221089365
Herke, B., Vicsek, L. (2022). The attitudes of young citizens in higher education towards universal basic income in the context of automation – A qualitative study. International Journal of Social Welfare, 1– 13. https://doi.org/10.1111/ijsw.12533
Vicsek, L., Tóth, T. (2022). Visions of human-centered artificial intelligence – Relations with ethics and power. In: Michael Filimowicz (Ed.) Algorithmic Ethics, Routledge. Accepted, in print.