On 24 October 2024 Prof Attila Papp Z and Zsuzsanna Sütő will give lectures at the conference ‘Instruction and Education in the Service of Societal Welfare. Challenges of Education and Instruction in the Age of Crises’. 24th National Conference on Educational Science, organised by the Scientific Committee of Education, Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

Titles of their presentation:

Attila Papp Z.: The school achievement of non-migrant minority students in PISA

Zsuzsanna Sütő: Individual and institutional factors supporting immobility among minority and majority Hungarian higher education students in Central Europe

On 11 October 2024, our colleague Béni L. Balogh gave a lecture at the international conference "Churches and Minorities" organised by the Romanian Institute for Research on National Minorities in Cluj-Napoca. The title of his presentation was "O prietenie sinceră. Relațiile dintre episcopul unitarian Elek Kiss și Petru Groza" ("A sincere friendship. The relationship between the Unitarian Bishop Elek Kiss and Petru Groza").

On 24 October 2024 Ágnes Tóth will give a lecture at the conference entitled One Hundred Years of the Collegium Hungaricum, organised by VERITAS Research Institute for History and Archives. Her presentation is entitled Opening and initial activities of the House of Hungarian Culture in Berlin (1970-1973)

The article by Ábel Bereményi, Judit Durst and Zsanna Nyírő: Reconciling habitus through third spaces: how do Roma and non-Roma first-in-family graduates negotiate the costs of social mobility in Hungary? published in Compare: A Jornal of Comparative and Interntional Education became open access.

Abstract

This article explores how first-in-family-graduate Roma and non-Roma Hungarians from the working-class experience education-driven social mobility and reconcile the dislocation of their primary-habitus due to changing class through transiting a ‘third space’. Drawing on Bhabha’s and bell hooks’ development of this concept, we aim to unpack the different ways how class-changers, in moving between the social milieu of their origin and their destination, occupy a unique position between two fields. Their social position is described as one of social navigators with a bridging potential between social classes. We also investigate what part higher education plays in this distinct form of changing class and becoming incorporated into middle-class society through a third space for those academic high achievers who come from working-class families. Contrasting the experience of Roma with non-Roma first-generation graduates in Hungary, we draw attention to the different opportunities of reconciling conflicting class-related habitus along ethno-racial lines.

On 16 October 2024 Ágnes Tóth will give a lecture at the conference entitled Cultural Diplomacy - with the power of tradition, inspired by the present, organised by the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences of the Károli Gáspár University of the Reformed Church in Hungary, in connection with the 100th anniversary of the opening of the Collegium Hungaricum. Her presentation is entitled Aspirations - Conditions - Games. Opening of the House of Hungarian Culture in Berlin (1967-1973)

Our colleague, Réka Marchut, will give a presentation in Cluj-Napoca on Thursday, October 10, 2024 at the international conference entitled Churches and Minorities, which is organized by the Romanian Institute for Research on National Minorities. The title of her presentation: The Catholic Church and the German Minority from Hungary in the Years of the WWII.

Tamás Gusztáv Filep will give a presentation at the conference entitled The Hungarian Martyrs of the Confessor Church III, organised by the Department of Historical Sciences of the Faculty of Reformed Theology of Selye János University on 9 October 2024. The title of his presentation is István Eglis' Way of the Cross. Dachau, 1944-1945 

Csilla Fedinec recalls the events in Ukraine in the HVG.hu series on regime changes in Central Europe

Our colleague Csilla Fedinec will give a plenary lecture entitled "A brief overview of Ukrainian legislation on national minorities, with special reference to Hungarian-Ukrainian diplomatic relations" at the international conference "Ukraine and the European Union: the development of relations in the light of the Russian-Ukrainian war, electoral processes and the rights of national minorities", which will take place on 4-5 October 2024 at the Uzhhorod National University, Ukraine.

A paper by Eszter Neumann was published in the Q1 journal Religion, State and Society. The article analyses the educational policy narratives of church policy makers, how they formulate strategies for Christian social mission and how they talk about the impact and role of churches in maintaining and reducing educational segregation.

You can read the open access article here.

Abstract

Since 2010, Hungary’s authoritarian populist government has radically redefined church-state relations, promoting the governance narrative of building an ‘old-style Christian democracy’. Public education has been reconceptualised within a religious framework and outsourced to religious actors. This article explores how key religious organisations engage with the government’s religious populism and govern their expanding school networks. Given the immanent tension between nativist Christian-conservative identity politics and Christian teachings about the church’s social mission, I focus on how Christian church elites have engaged with the education of underprivileged communities. Four characteristic types of strategic involvement are identified based on church education policies and their legitimacy discourses concerning their (lack of) engagement with the social question. Despite using different approaches to navigate political pressures, both the nativist illiberal and inclusive liberal visions of religion and their corresponding policies have reinforced the structures of segregated education and legitimised the government’s education policy.