Education

Postdoctoral Fellow, Herder Institute for Historical Research on East Central Europe, Marburg, 2015-2018.

Between 2015 and  2018, I was a post-doctoral researcher at the Herder Institute for Historical Research on East Central Europe in Marburg. I am grateful to the director, Professor Peter Haslinger, my colleagues Svetlana Boltovska, Jana Gleich, Theresa Schnurbus, Christian Lotz and Elke Bauer for their support, advice, and collaboration.

Between 2016 and 2018, I also had the honor of working with inspiring and engaging students at the Justus-Liebig-University Gießen. Thanks to Paul Vickers, I also benefitted from the discussions at the International Graduate Center for the Study of Culture.

PhD, History Department, University of Pittsburgh, 2009-2015.

PhD thesis: “Destined or Doomed? Hungarian Dissidents and their Western Friends, 1973-1998.”

I am indebted to my advisor Gregor Thum and committee members Evelyn Rawski, Bill Chase, Jonathan Harris and Árpád von Klimó (CUA) for their patience and unceasing commitment to my PhD project. I would also like to thank Gabriella Ivács at the Open Society Archive, Ilse Lazaroms at the Center for Jewish History, and at the University of Pittsburgh Madalina Veres, Katja Wezel, and Pernille Røge for their comments and support.

Thanks to the encouragement of then DAAD professor Árpád von Klimó, I arrived in Pittsburgh in the summer of 2009. With the generous support of a Social Science Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship, I spent the academic year 2011-2012 in Europe doing extensive research in Hungary, Germany, Austria, the U.S., the Czech Republic, Croatia, and France. While in Budapest, I could rely once more on support from my dear friends Zsófia Lóránd, Stevo Ðurašković as well as staff and faculty at the Central European University .

MA, Central European University in Budapest, 2006-2007.

Master Thesis: Monument discourse & the Hungarian case. Competing political interpretations in Budapest’s monuments for the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.

In 2007, I graduated from the Central European University in Budapest/ Hungary. I have been very fortunate to have received kind support and generous advice from professors István Rév and Balázs Trencsényi, who despite my initial ignorance and naïvité helped me with a project that originally I neither knew nor understood much about.

A group of extraordinary friends, among them Zsófia Lóránd, Stevo Đurašković, Danilo Šarenać, Uku Lember and Sinziana Paltineanu, and several outstanding professors initiated me to the history of Central Europe. They also inspired me to pursue my dissertation on the complex history of this region. I am grateful for the inspiration from my mentors István Rév, László Kontler, Alfred Rieber, Constantin Iordachi, Nadia al-Bagdadi and Balázs Trencsényi.

BA, European University Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder), 2003-2006.

Bachelor Thesis: Tannenberg. Aufstieg und Fall eines deutschen Erinnerungsortes.

In 2006, after four semesters at the European University Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder)/ Germany, I graduated with a Bachelors Degree in Cultural and Social Sciences. Professor Gangolf Hübinger and Dr. Klaus Große Kracht (then at the Center for Contemporary History, Potsdam) advised me on my undergraduate thesis on “Tannenberg. Rise and Fall of a German lieu de mémoire.”

Having grown up in a wealthy town near Bonn, the former capital of West Germany, I embraced the change of living in Frankfurt (Oder), approx. 60 miles east of Berlin on the Polish border. Dear friends taught me more than one could ever learn from textbooks about growing up in the GDR and the hardships that have hit the city since 1990. The founding idea of the Viadrina that sought to integrate the unified Germany and its eastern neighbors intrigued me. I was lucky to witness the dynamic and progressive presidency of Prof. Gesine Schwan, whose vision and activism earned the university national and international renown.