Academic Forum

Prof. Balázs graduated in Budapest at the Faculty of Economics of the “Karl Marx” University (later: Budapest School of Economics, today Corvinus University). He got his PhD degree and habilitated at the same University. He is a ScD of political science of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. In parallel with his government and diplomatic career he has been doing research on international relations and teaching in English, French, German and Hungarian. He was nominated Professor of the Corvinus University in 2000 and joined the CEU as a full time Professor in 2005.
After the systemic change in 1990 Prof. Balázs joined the Government of Hungary several times: State Secretary for Industry and Trade (1992-1993), State Secretary for European Integration (2002-2003); Ambassador of Hungary in Denmark (1994-1996), in Germany (1997-2000) and to the EU in Brussels (2003-2004); Government Representative of Hungary in the European Convention drafting the Constitutional Treaty (the predecessor of the Lisbon Treaty); the first Hungarian Member of the European Commission responsible for regional policy (2004), Foreign Minister of Hungary (2009-2010).
Research activities of Prof. Balázs are centered on the foreign policy of the EU and problems of the late modernization and European integration of the Eastern part of the continent. At the CEU he is teaching EU Enlargement and Neighborhood Policy (Fall Semester) and European Governance (Winter Semester). In 2005 he established a research center at the CEU for EU Enlargement Studies (CENS). Prof. Balázs published several books, chapters in books and articles.

The Director of IT is the head of the IT group and reports to the Chief Operating Officer (COO). He is responsible for the smooth operation of all hardware and software systems, supervision of the IT Helpdesk and support for overall user satisfaction concerning IT services.

Aleh Cherp's research interest include energy security and transitions to sustainable energy systems as well as strategic environmental assessment. He is the Rapporteur of the Advisory Working Group on the Environment of the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) of the European Commission and a Coordinating Lead Analyst (Energy Security) in the Global Energy Assessment.

My research focuses on various aspects of cognitive development in human infants. Specifically, I study infants' visual processing from the level of spatial attention and eye-movement control through the intermediate levels of object and face perception to the level of interpretation of observed actions in terms of goals and understanding of communicative signals. I am also interested in how cognitive processes are accomplished by the human brain and how cognitive development can be explained by the neural development in infancy. Beyond behavioral measures, I use high-density event-related potentials and near-infrared spectoscropy (optical imaging) to measure the on-line functioning of the brain while infants are engaged in various activities.

Stuart Durrant is senior lecturer of Real Estate Studies at CEU Business School, where he joined as the Area Coordinator for the Real Estate Management program in January 2008. Before, he worked as a Real Estate consultant, including service as Managing Director of DTZ Budapest, and later EC Harris Budapest. Durrant has been qulified as ASVA (Associate of the Incorporated Society of Valuers and Auctioneers) in 1994 and, on merging of ISVA and RICS, became MRICS (Member of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors) in 2000. He also served as Managing Director of the Business School from June 2009 to December 2010.

Jay Fogelman has been teaching at CEU Business School since 2005. He has more than 30 years of experience in business, including 25 in IT services and related fields. He has held regional, intercontinental and global management positions with the Amdahl Corporation, EMC Corporation and SAS Scandinavian Airlines. He is an experienced lecturer, consultant, executive coach, project manager, and has delivered sales training for some of the world’s largest technology companies across Europe and America. From 2000 to 2001, he managed EMC’s business consulting practice for Europe, Middle East and Africa. Fogelman holds an MA in philosophy of science from Johns Hopkins University, and a BA with special honors in philosophy from Lake Forest College in Illinois.
He is the Business School's representative in the CEU Senate.

Zsuzsa Gábor has been with the CEU since 1997. She has been the director of ACRO since it was set up in May 2006. In 2000-2006, as founding member of Center for Policy Studies (CPS), she worked as its program manager and later senior program manager.

Executive Director of the CEU Summer University program since 1997. Previously she taught English as a foreign language and language teaching methodology at the English Department of ELTE, and Hungarian language and culture to American students studying in Budapest. She was a visiting lecturer in Hungarian language at the Department of Central Eurasian Studies, Indiana University, Bloomington for three years. Her publications include two practical language teaching resource books in Hungarian.

Andreas Goldthau is Head of the Department of Public Policy. Prior to joining CEU, he worked as a Transatlantic PostDoc Fellow in International Relations and Security with the Paul Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), Johns Hopkins University, the RAND Corporation and the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), as well as a Research Fellow with the Institute for East European Studies at Freie University of Berlin. He is also a Fellow with the Global Public Policy Institute (Berlin/ Geneva).

John joined the Center for Academic Writing as Director in 1998. He currently works mainly with students of Public Policy, International Relations and Economics. He has also been involved as a consultant for writing programs and centers in various countries in the region. His principal research interest is in policy issues related to teaching writing in English or in other languages. Prior to joining CEU he worked in various countries of Central and Eastern, including the Baltic States, Bulgaria and the Czech Republic, but also in Germany, China, Finland and Turkey.

Elissa Helms holds a PhD in Cultural Anthropology. Her research interests cover the gendering of nationalism, NGO activism and donor aid, gender and ethnic violence, and the social dynamics of gender after significant ruptures such as war or the collapse of state-socialism. She is especially interested in gendered aspects of discursive representation and the opportunities and obstacles this creates for social activism and general understanding of social processes. Regionally, she focuses on Central and Eastern Europe, especially the successor states of socialist Yugoslavia. She has been conducting ethnographic research in the Bosniac (Muslim) dominated areas of Bosnia-Herzegovina since 1997. Her engagement with Bosnia began several years earlier, however, with several years of work with Bosnian refugees in Croatia, the US, and Bosnia itself before she returned to academia.
Elissa teaches a seminar on gender and nationalism from an anthropological perspective as well as qualitative research methods and academic writing. She also serves as the department’s Director of Doctoral Studies. Elissa is active in several international research networks and programs aimed at strengthening higher education, and especially gender studies, in the region. She is currently finishing a book manuscript on women’s activism and issues of representation in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Ferenc Huoranszki is professor of philosophy at the Department of Philosophy of the Central European University. His interests include metaphysics and the philosophy of action, particularly the questions of free will, causation, modality, and 18th century metaphysics and ethics.

Peter Johnson is Vice President for Student Services, and oversees the functional areas of admissions, financial aid, psychological counseling, student life, student recruitment, student records and registration. He holds a Master’s Degree in International Relations and a BA in Modern Languages. His professional career includes positions managing recruitment, admissions, financial aid, and international student services at various institutions including the University of California-Berkeley, Golden Gate University, and Pacific University. Peter has been actively involved in the Graduate Management Admissions Council (GMAC); and NAFSA: Association of International Educators.

Maciej Kisilowski is an assistant professor of Law and Public Management and Co-Director of Initiative for Regulatory Innovation research center. Prior to joining CEU, he taught at Yale University and at Warsaw University College of Technology and Business. He holds an MA in law from Yale Law School, an M.P.A. in economics and public policy from Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, and MBA with distinction from INSEAD. He also holds and MA and PhD in law from Warsaw University and is currently completing a PhD in legal science at Yale. He has consulted for numerous public and nonprofit organizations, including the Secretariat-General of the European Commission, Committee for Economic Development (Washington DC), and the Offices of the President and the Prime Minister of Poland. His research interests include the theory of regulation and public management.

historical anthropology of medieval and early modern European popular religion (sainthood, miracle beliefs, visions, healing, magic, witchcraft)

Bernadett Köles holds a Masters and a Doctorate degree from Harvard University, and a BSc from Indiana University, Bloomington. Her educational background is in the field of psychology, which she has applied to the areas of business, management and governmental regulations. Bernadett has joined CEU Business School in 2003 as a faculty member, serves as the Co-Director for the Initiative for Regulatory Innovation Research Center, and has served as the Academic Director of the institution’s Undergraduate Programs. Her teaching portfolio includes courses in psychology, leadership, cultural assessments, and methodological topics. Her primary areas of research interests focus on the relationship between culture, organizational climate, and processes of governmental regulations in CEE and beyond.

Professor at the Nationalism Studies and Jewish Studies Program at the Central European University, Hungary, and since 2002 he has been a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Ethnic and Minority Studies at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

Brandon has managed the CEU Web Unit since its inception in January 2010. He is responsible for technical management of the institutional website, together with its 100-plus affiliated minisites. Brandon also plays a central role in administering other online CEU endeavors such as the university's photo repository and social media presences. He is a CEU graduate (IRES, 2000).

Liviu Matei is CEU's Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, and a professor in the Department of Public Policy. He holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Bucharest. His professional career includes work as a consultant for UNESO, the Council of Europe, EU Commission, OSCE, European University Association, on issues concerning higher education and civil society; Co-chair of the Working Group on Higher Education of the Stability Pact for South-East Europe; Director General for International Relations, Romanian Ministry of Education; Lecturer, Babes-Bolyai University; Program Director, Médecins Sans Frontières, Program of Assistance to Underprivileged Roma Communities in Transylvania. Liviu Matei is a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of the European Higher Education Area, member of the Board of the International Higher Education Suport Program, and member of the GRE European Advisory Council.

Late antiquity

PhD from "Alexandru Ioan Cuza" University, Iasi, Romania

Research Interests: Differential and Difference Equations, Calculus of Variations, Evolution Equations in Banach Spaces, Fluid Mechanics, Singular Perturbation Theory, Various Topics in Applied Mathematics  

Wolfgang H. Reinicke is the inaugural dean of the School of Public Policy and International Affairs (SPPIA) launched at Central European University in September 2011. He is also director of the Global Public Policy Institute (GPPi) and a non-resident senior fellow in the foreign policy studies program at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC.

His areas of expertise include global governance, global finance, international economic institutions, public-private partnerships and global public policy networks as well as EU-US relations. His numerous publications include Global Public Policy. Governing without Government? (Brookings Institution Press 1998), Critical Choices. The United Nations, Networks, and the Future of Global Governance (with Francis Deng, Thorsten Benner, Jan Martin Witte, IDRC Publishers 2000) and Business UNUsual. Facilitating United Nations Reform Through Partnerships (with Jan Martin Witte, United Nations Publications 2005).

Reinicke was a senior scholar with the Brookings Institution from 1991-1998 and a senior partner and senior economist in the Corporate Strategy Group of the World Bank in Washington, DC, from 1998-2000. From 1999-2000, while in Washington, he directed the Global Public Policy Project, which provided strategic guidance on global governance for the UN Secretary General’s Millennium Report. He co-founded the Global Public Policy Institute in 2003.

Wolfgang Reinicke holds degrees from Queen Mary College of London University (BSc in economics) and Johns Hopkins University (MA in international relations and economics). He received his MPhil and PhD in political science from Yale University.

Paul holds a PhD from the Department of International Politics at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. Paul has been a Guest Researcher at the former Copenhagen Peace Research Institute (COPRI) and at the International Peace Research Institute, Oslo (PRIO). He is Associate Professor at IRES. 

Carsten Q. Schneider is Associate Professor and Founding Director of the Center for the Study of Imperfections in Democracies (DISC). Prior to joining CEU in 2004, he obtained his PhD from the European University Institute in Florence. His research focuses on regime transitions, the consolidation and quality of democracies. He is also working in the field of comparative methodology, especially on Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) and its fuzzy set extension. Together with Claudius Wagemann, Schneider uis currently finishing the manuscript for a textbook on set-theoretic methods to be published with Cambridge University Press.
Schneider is member of the Young Academy of Science in Germany (http://www.diejungeakademie.de/) and he spent the Academic Year 2009-2010 as a John F. Kennedy Memorial Fellow at the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies at Harvard University (http://www.ces.fas.harvard.edu/).

Marsha Siefert began teaching courses in international communication and oral history at CEU in 1996. Her research focuses on cultural and communications history, with current projects on nineteenth-century imperial telecommunications networks and film cultures in the Cold War.

Having his first degree in History and Political Science from Donetsk National University, Ukraine, Serge moved to CEU, Budapest in 1996, subsequently getting an MA in International Relations and European Studies and LLM in Comparative Constitutional Law. Over the past 12 years, Serge has had increasingly diverse work experiences: starting from coordinating International Relations programs for the Open University and the Ukrainian Soros Foundation, and finishing with setting up the first alumni affairs program for his Alma Mater in Budapest. Currently supervising the Alumni Relations & Career Services team, and working closely with the CEU Development Office, Serge manages a diverse portfolio of alumni, career, corporate and fundraising programs. He also serves as Chair of the Board for INTAL (International Alumni Relations) group of the European Association of International Education (EAIE), and as CEU professional member coordinator for CASE (Council for Advancement and Support of Education). Serge pioneered integrated alumni relations in Central Easter Europe and has been involved in professional training, workshops and courses as organizer, faculty member, course leader and consultant.

Urban history, literacy, material culture

Gabor's research interest is primarily in the interaction between voting behavior and the performance of democratic institutions. He is also interested in public opinion, survey methodology, and East European politics. He is co-author of Post-Communist Party Systems: Competition, Representation, and Inter-Party Cooperation (Cambridge University Press, 1999), author or co-author of over five dozen articles on electoral behaviour, public opinion, political parties and democratic consolidation in edited volumes, political science and sociology journals.

Renáta Uitz is chair of the Comparative Constitutional Law program. Her teaching covers subjects in comparative constitutional law in Europe and North America, transitional justice and human rights protection with special emphasis on the enforcement of constitutional rights and on issues of bodily privacy and sexuality.

Tibor Várady is an internationally-recognized scholar and expert on international commercial arbitration, private international law, and international business transactions. He was on the faculty of the Novi Sad Law School in the former Yugoslavia and served as director of its Center for International Studies for many years. Since 1993 he is a professor at the Legal Studies Department of the Central European University in Budapest, and Chairman of the International Business Law Program.

Ph.D. (Warwick University): Head of Department; environmental philosophy and political theory; academic writing for environmental sciences and policy. I have research interests in the areas of environmental ethics/values and sustainable lifestyles and would be interested in accepting new doctoral students (for 2012-15 intake) with projects in these fields.