Our Authors

ANTAL BABUS (Gyöngyös, 1960) literary historian, librarian graduated from Debrecen University (KLTE) in 1984 majoring in Hungarian and Russian. He obtained his PhD degree in 2002 from the same university. He has been working in the Department of Manuscripts and Rare Books of the Library and Information Centre of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences since 1986 and has been acting as Head of Department since 2010. His main research area is Hungarian and Russian-Soviet literature of the 20th century.

GERGELY EGEDY (Budapest, 1953), historian and political scientist, university professor. He teaches at the newly founded National University of Public Service. He specialises in the history of political thought and British history. His major works include Nagy-Britannia története (A History of Great Britain, 1998, 2011); Konzervativizmus az ezredfordulón (Conservatism at the Turn of the Millennium, 2001); Brit konzervatív gondolkodás és politika (British Conservative Thought and Politics, 2005); Bevezetés a nemzetközi kapcsolatok elméletébe (An Introduction to the Theory of International Relations, 2007, 2011).

FERENC HÖRCHER (Budapest, 1964) is a philosopher, intellectual historian, poet and legal theorist. Currently, he is head of the Research Institute of Politics and Government at the National University of Public Service, Budapest, and senior fellow at the Institute of Philosophy of the Loránd Eötvös Research Network. His interests in philosophy include political philosophy and the philosophy of art, in intellectual history early modern political and aesthetic thought and most recently, the history of modern Hungarian political thought. He recently published a co-edited and co-authored volume, A History of the Hungarian Constitution. Law, Government and Political Culture in Central Europe (Bloomsbury,2019), and his own monograph, A Political Philosophy of Conservatism. Prudence, Moderation and Tradition (BloomsburyAcademic, 2020). His next volume is going to be published with the title A Political Philosophy of the European City by Lexington Books.

GYULA ILLYÉS (1902–1983) worked and studied in Parisbetween 1920 and 1926, and became connected with the Surrealist poets and artists. Back in Hungary, in the Thirties, he was invited to work on the literary magazine Nyugat (The West) by the editor-in-chief, the famous poet and writer, Mihály Babits. Anti-Nazi, a leader of the National Peasant Party, the Communists tried to win Illyés for their causes after World War II, with no success. His secretly written poem from 1950, One Sentence on Tyranny, became the emblematic work of the October 1956 Revolution, banned in Hungary until the late 1980s. Returning to publication in 1961, Illyés lived to a productive and successful old age, renewing his poetry, writing dramas, translations and essays.

GÉZA JESZENSZKY (Budapest, 1941). Historian, D.Phil. (Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest). Was schoolteacher and librarian; from 1976 to 2011 taught modern history at what is today Corvinus University of Budapest. Was Fulbright Visiting Professor at the University of California in Santa Barbara in 1984–1986. Also taught at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; Pacific Lutheran University at Tacoma, WA; College of Europe, Warsaw, Poland; Babes-Bolyai University at Kolozsvár (Cluj-Napoca, Romania). He was Foreign Minister of Hungary in the first non-Communist government (1990–1994), Ambassador to the United States of America in 1998–2002, and to Norway and Iceland in 2011–2014. He is the author of a large number of scholarly publications and political writings, including Lost Prestige: The Changing Image of Hungary in Britain, 1894–1918 (Budapest, 1986, 1994, 2020 in Hungarian, came out in English in 2020); Post-Communist Europe and Its National/Ethnic Problems (Budapest, 2005, 2009), July 1944. Deportation of the Jews of Budapest Foiled. (Ed.) (Reno, NV: Helena History Press LLC, 2018.) His book on Hungary’s relations to its neighbours in the years of the regime change (Kísérlet a trianoni trauma orvoslására. Magyarország szomszédsági politikája a rendszerváltozás éveiben) came out in 2016. He is co-author of a book on the history of skiing in the Carpathian Basin (2016). He is an editorial adviser for Hungarian Review.

ISTVÁN KISS is a political scientist and an international relations expert. He is currently the Executive Director of the Budapest-based think tank, Danube Institute. He has earned his Bachelor and Masters degrees at the Pázmány Péter Catholic University and at the University of Edinburgh. Currently he is working on his PhD at his alma mater. From 2013 to 2018 he worked at the Századvég Foundation first as a Research Fellow then as a Senior Research Fellow. Before joining the Danube Institute, he worked as a Political Adviser in the Prime Minister’s Office of Hungary. His main areas of interest are Great Britain and the Commonwealth Countries.

GYULA KODOLÁNYI (Budapest, 1942) Editor-in-chief of Hungarian Review is the author of sixteen collections of poetry, scholarly and literary essays and poetry translations. He taught English and American Literature at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest in 1970–1989. He received research and teaching fellowships from the British Council, the American Council of Learned Societies, CIES and The German Marshall Fund of the US. He taught at the University of California in Santa Barbara (1984–1985) and at Emory University in Atlanta (2004–2009), and read his poetry in English widely in the US. In 1987, he was a founding member of the Hungarian Democratic Forum (MDF). In 1990–1994, he served as Senior Foreign Policy Adviser to the Prime Minister. In 1992–1996 he was the Vice President of the Hungária Televízió Foundation, which created the Duna Television, a cultural satellite channel. In 2000–2005 he was an Adviser to President Ferenc Mádl. In 2012, he received Hungary’s Middle Cross with the Star and in 2005 the President’s Medal of Honour for his public and literary achievements. With Magyar Szemle, he received a Prima Prize in 2003. In 2015, he was Prima Primissima Prize winner in literature. He is a member of the Hungarian Academy of the Arts. In 2016 he received the Janus Pannonius Prize for poetry translation. Hereceivedtheprestigious Kossuth Prize in 2020.

LÍVIA MOHÁS (1928) holds a BA from the College of Physical Education, and an MA in Psychology from Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest. Between 1952 and 1969 she worked as a primary school and secondary grammar school teacher. From 1973 she had a position at the Ministry of Education, then in 1974 she moved on to the pedagogy research team of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, where she worked as a senior researcher until 1981. Between 1981 and 1983 she became a senior researcher of the National Pedagogy Institute. Since the mid-1980s she has been working as a freelance writer and psychologist, and has published several novels, essay anthologies, and popular science books on psychology.

DANIEL J. MAHONEY holds the Augustine Chair in Distinguished Scholarship in Worcester, Massachusetts, USA, where he has taught since 1986. His most recent books are The Conservative Foundations of the Liberal Order: Defending Democracy Against Its Modern Enemies and Immoderate Friends (2011); The Other Solzhenitsyn: Telling the Truth about a Misunderstood Writer and Thinker (2014); and The Idol of Our Age: How the Religion of Humanity Subverts Christianity (2018). He is presently working on a book called The Statesman as Thinker: Nine Portraits of Greatness, Courage, and Moderation, to be published by Encounter Books.

JOHN O’SULLIVAN (Liverpool, 1942) is editor-at-large of National Review in New York where he served as Editor-in-Chief for ten years. He was a Special Adviser to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in Downing Street and later assisted her in the writing of her two volumes of memoirs. He has held a wide variety of senior editorial positions in the media on both sides of the Atlantic. He is the founder and co-chairman of the Atlantic Initiative, an international bipartisan organisation dedicated to reinvigorating and expanding the Atlantic community of democracies, launched at the Congress of Prague in May 1996 by President Václav Havel and Lady Thatcher. His book, The President, the Pope, and the Prime Minister (on Pope John Paul II, President Reagan and Prime Minister Thatcher), was published in Hungarian, too, in 2010. Until 2011, he was the Executive Editor of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty in Prague. Currently he is the President of the Danube Institute, Budapest.

BARBARA PIAZZA-GEORGI (Budapest, 1952) retired from the United Nations development system in June 2015, after thirty years spent mostly in Africa and the Middle East. Her latest assignment was as UNFPA country representative in Palestine and Syria, focusing on public health, gender and youth issues in complex humanitarian settings. She holds degrees in political science, international relations and development economics from the universities of Reading (UK)and Witwatersrand University (South Africa). She has published research on issues related to peace building, social capital and entrepreneurship. She is currently based in Budapest (Hungary), working for the Hungarian Charity Service of the Order of Malta and the Jesuit Refugee Service.

DAVID A. J. REYNOLDS is a writer, teacher, and editor from England, who has lived and taught in Hungary, the Czech Republic, and the US. He is the author of Revising History in Communist Europe: Constructing Counter-Revolution in 1956 and 1968 (Anthem Press, January 2020).

JÓZSEF SISA (Budapest, 1952) is an art historian. His main field of research is 19th century architecture and garden design. He studied English and Art History at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, and following graduation worked in the area of building conservation (1976–1984). Since 1986 he has been at the Institute of Art History of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (now Eötvös Loránd Research Network), between 2012 and 2016 serving as the director of the Institute. Since 2011 he has also taught at the University of Pécs. In 2013 he was awarded the Officer’s Cross of the Hungarian Order of Merit. His main works include The Architecture of Historic Hungary (ed., with Dora Wiebenson, 1998), Lechner, a Creative Genius (2014), and Motherland and Progress: Hungarian Architecture and Design 1800–1900 (ed., 2016).