Teachers, lecturers and staff of the Department
ZSOMBOR BÓDY, professor
Zsombor Bódy, D.Sc., historian, sociologist, member of the Department of Comparative Historical Sociology, Head of the Doctoral School, President of the Doctoral Council of the Faculty, member of the Board of The István Hajnal Circle – Hungarian Social History Association.
In 2011, he obtained his PhD in the Doctoral Program in Economic and Social History at the ELTE BTK. In 2014, he became a Fellow at the Imre Kertész Kolleg (Friedrich Schiller Universität, Jena).
His areas of interest are 20th century social history in comparative perspective, historiography, and historical sociology of social groups. He has published volumes and papers on the history of social policy, the social consequences of the First and Second World Wars, and the interconnection of politics and society.
Hungarian Doctoral Council profile
GYÁNI GÁBOR, professor emeritus
Gábor Gyáni is a historian and a full member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. He is also a professor emeritus in the Department of Comparative Historical Sociology at ELTE TáTK.
Early in his career, he was a staff member at the Archives of the Capital of Budapest. Then, he joined the Institute of Historical Research at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Gyáni has worked as a lecturer at the Institute of Sociology of the Faculty of Social Sciences, the Doctoral Program in Social and Economic History at ELTE, the Doctoral School of History at Eszterházy Károly University, and the Central European University. He has been a corresponding member since 2010 and a full member since 2016 of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Gyáni is a founding member of the István Hajnal Circle – Hungarian Social History Association and served as its president from 2004 to 2010.
His research interests include the urban history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the social and mental history of Hungary and Europe, and the theoretical issues and historiographical rhetoric of history.
Hungarian Doctoral Council profile
ZSUZSANNA KISS, habilitated associate professor
Zsuzsanna Kiss, PhD, sociologist, social historian, habilitated associate professor, member of the Department of Comparative Historical Sociology at the ELTE TáTK and head of the Department's Research Group for Prosopography and Family History. Since 2022, she has been Director of the Institute of Sociology, a member of the Board of The István Hajnal Circle – Hungarian Social History Association, and co-leader of the #Globintersect research group with the European University Institute in Florence.
She graduated as a sociologist at the Faculty of Social Sciences of Eötvös Loránd University, specialising in the history of society and mentality. She then obtained her PhD at the Doctoral Programme in Economic and Social History of ELTE and was habilitated at the ELTE Faculty of Social Sciences.
She is a specialist in 19th-20th century social history. His monograph on the history of the public sphere and the transformation of rural society in this period, entitled The Only Space, was published in 2020. In her habilitation thesis, she dealt with the history of the professionalisation of farmers. More recently, she has been working on the social history of single women in the 20th century.
Hungarian Doctoral Council profile
GÁBOR I. KOVÁCS, retired head of the department, professor emeritus, “ Professor KIG ”
Gábor Kovács I., CSc (1986), Professor Emeritus (2013). He was the head of the Department of Comparative Historical Sociology, the predecessor to the Department of Historical Sociology (1992-), and then the Department of Historical Sociology (1994-2012). He was also the deputy director of the ELTE Institute of Sociology and the Center for Advanced Studies (1986-1991). He is the founder of the Research Group on Prosopography and Family History (ELTE TÁTK) and a member of the advisory board of the István Hajnal Circle, the Hungarian Social History Association, and the journal Korall. He is a former member of the Hungarian Sociological Society (1991-), the Historical Sociology Section (1991-), the Hungarian Scholarship Council (1990-1999), the Social Sciences Section of the National Scientific Research Fund (1994-1998), and the Sociology Jury (1994-1996). He was secretary of the Doctoral Council of the ELTE Institute of Sociology from 1995 to 1999 and a member of the ELTE Faculty of Social Sciences Habilitation Committee from 1999 to 2001. He was an elected member of the ELTE University Council from 1991 to 1997 and later of the Council of the Faculty of Social Sciences. He was an advisory member of the Hungarian Accreditation Committee from 1998 to 2004 and chairman of the Sociology Committee of the MAB from 1998 to 2004.
He was a member of the Hungarian Protestant Public Culture Association board (since 1993), a trustee and secretary of the Hungarian Protestant Studies Foundation (1993–2003), and a trustee of the Calvinist Talent Foundation (1999–2009). Curator and vice-president of Educa Transfer International-Holland-Hungarian Educational Transfer Foundation (1995-1999), full member of the Doctors' College of the Calvinist Church (1997-), president of the Pedagogical Section (1997-1999), editor of the journal Christian Education (1996-1999). He is a recipient of the Trefort Ágoston Memorial Medal (1992), the Hungarian Higher Education Medal (2004), the ELTE Pro Universitate Gold Medal (2012), the Károli Gáspár Prize (2017) and the ELTE TÁTK Social Sciences Research Award (2020).
He graduated in Hungarian History at the Faculty of Humanities of the Kossuth Lajos University of Debrecen (1963-1969), then worked as an archivist at the BAZ County Archives (1969-1971), then as an interviewer and researcher at the Research Centre for Mass Communication of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (1971-1973). Later, he worked at the ELTE Institute of Sociology and Centre for Advanced Training, the Institute of Sociology of the ELTE University of Applied Sciences and the Faculty of Social Sciences of the ELTE. Since 1983 Adjunct Professor, since 1987 Associate Professor at the ELTE. After three years of post-graduate studies, he obtained his doctorate in 1986. In 1998 he was awarded the Széchenyi Professorial Scholarship and in 2003 the Széchenyi Scholarship. Since 1990, he has been involved in the development of the Institute's new training structure and reform curriculum. He worked primarily on the integration of historical sociology and social history into the curriculum and on the formulation of the thematic framework. In 1992 he founded the Historical Sociology Group. He organised the compilation and publication of textbooks and textbooks for the teaching of Hungarian social history. Together with Gábor Gyáni, he established the Department of Social and Mental History within the Sociology Department.
His field of interest is the history of Hungarian society and culture in the 19th century, with special emphasis on the study of the knowledge elite, university teachers and academics using prosopographical methods, and the study of large social groups according to their denominational and cultural patterns. As a member of the Research Group on Prosopography and Family History, he is currently an active participant in the department's work. He edits the book series Societas et ecclesia (1993-) and edits and partly writes the series Historical Elite Research-Historical Elite Research (1991-).
Hungarian Doctoral Council Profile
GERGELY MAGOS, assistant professor
Gergely Magos PhD, historian, sociologist, assistant professor at the Department of Comparative Historical Sociology at ELTE TáTK. He graduated in History and Sociology from Eötvös Loránd University. In 2021, he received his doctoral degree from the Doctoral Program in Social and Economic History at the ELTE BTK.
Between 2013 and 2022, he was a colleague at the Hungarian National Archives. He is a member of the History of Professionalization Research Group and The István Hajnal Circle – Hungarian Social History Association. In 2024, he was awarded a University Excellence Scholarship (EKÖP).
His areas of interest include the history of health care, especially pharmacy and mental illness, and the history of modern professions in the 19th-20th centuries.
ÁRPÁD TAKÁCS, departmental secretary
Árpád Takács joined the elite research led by Gábor I. Kovács as a coder in 1991 and has been strengthening the department ever since.
GUEST LECTURERS
Katalin Baráth PhD, research fellow (MTA-SZTE-ELTE Research Group on the History of Globalisation).
She graduated in Hungarian Language and Literature and History at the Faculty of Humanities of ELTE, where she also completed her PhD in the Social and Economic History PhD Programme (2013). She worked in the advertising industry for ten years as a copywriter and then senior creative. She has published six novels and two radio plays.
Éva Fisli PhD, historian, photomuseologist, editor, curator. She graduated in Hungarian History from Eötvös Loránd University as a member of the Eötvös Collegium, and started her doctoral studies at the Atelier Centre for French-Hungarian Social Sciences. She obtained her PhD degree in 2012 at the joint doctoral programme of ELTE BTK and Sciences Po, Paris.
Since 2009, she has been the curator of the international collection of the Historical Photographic Collection of the Hungarian National Museum, and since 2021, she has been involved in research on Hungarian photography. From autumn 2024, she is the director of the Historical Photographic Collection.
She is the author and editor of the book of studies entitled Material Photograph (2020), as well as of Women Photographers (2020) and Rosti (2021), a researcher of the work of André Kertész, Robert Capa, Ergy Landau and Ata Kandó, among others, and the initiator of the National Museum's Rosti Prize for contemporary photography books.
László Kiss, PhD, sociologist, research fellow at the Centre for Social Sciences.
He graduated in sociology from Eötvös Loránd University, specializing in the history of society and mentality, and received his PhD from the ELTE Doctoral School of Sociology. His main research interests are 20th century Hungarian social history and the history of sport.
Gábor Koloh, PhD, historian, research fellow (Institute of Historical Studies, HUN-REN BTK), assistant professor (Department of Economic and Social History, ELTE BTK). He defended his PhD thesis in 2018 at the Doctoral Program in Social and Economic History at ELTE BTK. He has completed further professional training programs in Cluj-Napoca, Umea and Lund, and has worked as a scholarship researcher in Vienna and Tübingen.
Viktor Papp, PhD, social historian, media researcher, member of the History of Professionalization Research Group (ELTE TáTK-BTK).
He received his PhD in 2023 from the Doctoral Program in Social and Economic History at the ELTE BTK Doctoral School. In 2024, his monograph, entitled "Lawyers in Hungary in the 19th century," was published as volume 5 of the Compass Social History Studies series.
His research interests include 19th-century social history, with a special focus on the history of lawyers and the gentry question, and as a media researcher, he is involved in the analysis of the reception of media content on historical topics.
Tamás Révész PhD, historian, research fellow, (Institute of History, HUN-REN BTK). He defended his PhD thesis at the University of Vienna in 2018. His research interests include the social and cultural history of armies and wars. His latest book about the Hungarian state and its army in 1918-1919 was published in 2019. His articles have been published in international journals, including First World War Studies, Contemporary European History, Südost-Forschungen, Hungarian Historical Review and Journal of Modern History.
Orsolya Ring, PhD, historian, research fellow at the Institute of Political Science of the Centre for Social Sciences, associate professor at the ELTE Faculty of Humanities, editor of the Korall Social History Journal.
She received her PhD in 2011 from the Atelier Interdisciplinary History PhD Programme at ELTE. She was a colleague of the National Archives of the Hungarian National Archives from 2000 to 2017.
Her fields of interest are post-1945 social history, theatre history, and the application of digital humanities and text mining methods in historical research.
Hungarian Doctoral Council profile
Márton Simonkay, PhD, historian, high school teacher of history and geography, assistant professor at the Department of Contemporary History, University of Szeged. He defended his dissertation in 2024 in the Doctoral Programme in Social and Economic History at the ELTE BTK.
Gábor Tabajdi PhD, historian, researcher at the Committee of National Remembrance and the 1956 Institute Foundation, coordinator of the “White Ravens” working group, game developer. He studied history, political science and philosophy at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences of ELTE. She defended her doctoral thesis in 2013.
Tibor Takács, PhD, historian, researcher, colleague of the Historical Archives of the State Security.
He graduated from Kossuth Lajos University in 1997 as a history teacher and received his PhD in history from the same university, then known as the University of Debrecen, in 2005.