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 the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. In parallel with his government and diplomatic career he has been teaching and doing research. He was nominated Professor of the Corvinus University in 2000 and joined the CEU as a full time Professor in 2005. He is regularly teaching at various home and foreign universities, lecturing in English, French, German and Hungarian.

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.

Gábor Betegh is professor at the Philosophy Department of the Central European University. He studied at Eötvös University in Budapest, the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris, and at the University of Cambridge. He works on ancient philosophy, in particular on ancient metaphysics, cosmology and theology.

Aleh Cherp's research interest include energy security and transitions to sustainable energy systems as well as strategic environmental assessment. He is a Coordinating Lead Analyst (Energy Security) in the Global Energy Assessment and the Consortium coordinator of MESPOM Erasmus Mundus Masters course.

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.

Currently, CEU Provost/Academic Pro-Rector, Katalin Farkas is a professor of philosophy in the Central European University. She studied mathematics and philosophy at the Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest. She is interested in the philosophy of mind, metaphysics, skepticism, and Descartes.

Jay's primary interest is in explanation in the social sciences. Using a wide range of interdisciplinary tools, he is currently investigating the modeling of explanation for crowding phenomena.

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. His academic career includes stints with the Paul Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), Johns Hopkins University, the RAND Corporation, the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP) and the Institute for East European Studies at Freie University of Berlin. He is also a Fellow with the Global Public Policy Institute (Berlin/ Geneva) and and an Adjunct Professor with Johns Hopkins University’s MSc in Energy Policy and Climate.

Peter Hardi has been a professor of business ethics and corporate social responsibility at the CEU Business School and the Director of the Center for Business and Society since joining the faculty in 2006. His current research focuses on the role of business in society and the interaction with major social partners and on the linkage between resource management and social outcomes, particularly the efficiency and sustainability of resource use in CEE and Central Asia. As director of the Center for Business and Society, Hardi heads several research projects dealing with corporate ethics and sustainable business practices.

Mel Horwitch is Dean and University Professor at Central European University Business School, located in Budapest, Hungary.

Previously, he was Professor of Technology Management, Director of the Institute for Technology and Enterprise, former Chair of the Department of Technology Management, Founding Director of the Othmer Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies, and faculty director of the CleantechExecs Executive Program at the Polytechnic Institute of New York University.

Professor Horwitch is an acknowledged expert on entrepreneurship and innovation management. He has written extensively on technology strategy, particularly with reference to knowledge-intensive sectors (e.g. services, media, information technology, and telecommunications), global innovation, and the role of networks and cross-boundary and multi-sector endeavors in developing technology. Most recently, Professor Horwitch has focused his research on clean tech and sustainability management, global innovation (especially with regard to emerging economies), global entrepreneurship in both stand-alone and corporate venues and the future configuration of modern innovation. He developed new courses at NYU-Poly on clean tech and renewable energy innovation, services innovation, entrepreneurship, business model innovation, global innovation, managing growing enterprises and society-wide technology policy. He also has extensive executive education experience.

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.

Gábor Kézdi is Associate Professor at Central European University (CEU) and Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Economics of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (IEHAS). He received his Ph. D. from the University of Michigan in 2003 and joined the CEU faculty in 2004. His research interests include labor economics (especially human capital formation), other areas of applied microeconomics (especially household behavior under uncertainty), applied cross-sectional and panel econometrics, and program evaluation.

Mark has joined CEU in 2008. He holds an MA in Economics (Corvinus University Budapest) and an ACCA qualification. Before joining CEU Mark has worked for various for-profit organizations and has broad knowledge in finance (accounting, audit, controlling, treasury, banking).

Born and educated in Budapest, Hungary, I also spent a fair amount of time for study, teaching or research in England, Scotland, North America, Germany and Italy. I have been a member of CEU's History Department since its first MA program in 1992 (and was its head from 1999-2005 and 2006-2008). My acedemic interests focus on intellectual history, especially political and historical thought, inter-cultural communication and reception, and more recently the history of scientific knowledge production, in the early-modern period and the Enlightenment.

Professor at the Nationalism Studies and Jewish Studies Program at the Central European University, Hungary.

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. A CEU alumnus (IRES, '00), Brandon also plays a central role in administering other CEU websites such as the University's Flickr photo repository and Youtube channel. Prior to CEU, Brandon worked in the NGO and private sectors on initiatives relating to both his academic qualifications (International Relations) and work experience in web communication and information technology.

Jasmina Lukić, is an Associate Professor, Head Department of Gender Studies (since 2009) and the CEU coordinator for Erasmus Mundus MA Program in Women’s Studies and Gender Studies GEMMA (since 2005). She has been a co-founder and the editor in chief of the journal for feminist theory Ženske studije (Beograd 1996-1999) and an associate editor of The European Journal of Women’s Studies (1999-2009). She is a member of the editorial board of Aspasia International Yearbook on Interdisciplinary Women's and Gender history (since 2006)
Her research interests are in literary and cultural studies, and in South-Slavic literatures. She has published a number of articles and book chapters in English, Serbian and Croatian. Her publications include a collection of critical studies Drugo lice (The Other Face, Beograd 1984), and a monograph Metaproza: čitanje žanra (Metafiction: Reading the Genre, Beograd 2001). Together with Joanna Regulska and Darja Zavirsek she has edited a volume Women and Citizenship in Central and Eastern Europe (2006). She has also edited a Special Issue of European Journal of Women’s Studies on Women, Identity, and Identification: “Who are I” (2003) and a Special Issue of European Journal of Women’s Studies on Writing across Borders (with Paola Bono, 2009).

Uwe Puetter is Professor at the Department of Public Policy and Director of the Center for European Union Research (CEUR). He holds a Jean Monnet Chair in European Public Policy and Governance. His research interests are in the field of European Union policy-making. Here he focuses on intergovernmental decision-making in the European Council and the Council as well as the fields of economic, social and foreign policy. Uwe Puetter is teaching courses on European integration, governance and socio-economic policy.

Wolfgang H. Reinicke is the founding dean of the School of Public Policy (SPP) 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.

Judit Sándor is a professor at the Faculty of Political Science, Legal Studies and Gender Studies. She took her bar exam in Hungary and conducted legal practice in Hungary, as well as at Simmons & Simmons in London. She has held fellowships at McGill (Montreal), at Stanford (Palo Alto), at the University of Chicago and at Maison de sciences de l’homme (Paris). In 1996 she received a Ph.D. in law and political science. She was one of the founders of the first Patients' Rights Organization (‘Szószóló’) in Hungary, she is a member of the Hungarian Science and Research Ethics Council, and also works at the Hungarian Human Reproduction Commission. With seven books published (as author and editor) in the field of human rights and biomedical law, her works have appeared in different languages, including Hungarian, English, French and Portuguese. Founding director of the Center for Ethics and Law in Biomedicine (CELAB) at CEU since September 2005, her main fields of research include biopolitics, reproductive rights, genetics and law, gender and technology, new generation of human rights and bioethics.

John Shattuck currently serves as CEU President and Rector. He comes to CEU after a distinguished career spanning more than three decades in higher education, international diplomacy, foreign policy and human rights. 

My work is focused on teaching and research that are respectively geared toward innovative student-centered learning and action research useful for understanding and supporting social movements for environmental and social justice. In addition to directing the doctoral program in our department and supporting the CEU Sustainability Advisory Committee and the Sustainable Campus Initiative, I am co-founder of the Environmental and Social Justice Action Research Group (ACT JUST). ACT JUST involves learning forums and research on the relationship between everyday living, the environment, and social, economic, and political forces. The courses that I teach include: Environmental Politics, Qualitative Research Methods, and Disciplinary Approaches to Environmental Problems.

Matyas Szabo is the director of the Central European University’s (CEU) Curriculum Resource Center, and is one of the center’s instructors and consultants in higher education, specializing on curriculum development, course design, students’ assessment and quality assurance in higher education. He has offered workshops for university professors in more than 20 countries, and is involved in several international projects targeting curriculum reform and faculty development in higher education.

He received his MA from CEU’s Sociology department in 1994. He has worked as a junior research fellow and teaching assistant at CEU’s Center for the Study of Nationalism, and as an analyst intern at the Radio Free Europe/Open Media Research Institute in Prague. Since 1996 he has been employed by CEU. Currently he is doing his PhD in sociology of knowledge and higher education at the University of Warwick, UK.

Matyas’ main research interests in the area of higher education are the development of social science disciplines in post-socialist countries, and the ways in which international and global trends in knowledge production and the changing role of universities have impacted the content and teaching of social science curricula.

Professor Tibor Tajti received his S.J.D. and LL.M. degrees from Central European University and his LL.B. from the Law School of the University of Novi Sad, Serbia. He is currently teaching in the International Business Law Program at CEU Legal Studies Department. 

Balázs Trencsényi has been teaching at CEU since 2004. He also serves as Co-Director of Pasts, Inc., Center for Historical Studies. He is Associate Editor of East Central Europe, published by Brill. His main fields of interest are: history of political thought in Central and Southeastern Europe, history of historiography and nationalism studies. Currently he is Principal Investigator of the international research project, "Negotiating Modernity. History of Modern Political Thought in East Central Europe," supported by the European Research Council.

Ph.D. (UC Berkeley and UCLA), MSc (ELTE, Budapest):  Energy efficiency and renewable energy sources; energy policies for economies in transition; CO2 emission mitigation; climate change policy; EU enlargement and sustainable energy policy.

Office: Zrinyi 408

Sybil heads the University's Communications Office. Before joining CEU, her higher education experience included three senior posts totaling 11 years: director of communications for the University System of Maryland; director of development communications for Johns Hopkins University; and executive director of communications for the law school at the University of California, Berkeley. She worked for seven years in the business sector, as the marketing communications manager for Bechtel Corp. She also has 13 years of communications experience with two top U.S. research and development enterprises: the Tennessee Valley Authority and Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Teaching in the Winter term 2013