The academics of the department have been involved in border studies for a long time. Associate professor Zsolt Bottlik has been coordinating a network focused on the geographies of belonging (ethnic boundary-making etc.) as well as developments in border regions (see https://evfm.elte.hu/).  Members of this network have been meeting on a monthly or bimonthly basis, including invited guests, a few of whom have been ambitious graduate students.

Several members of the department have cooperated with the established border research think-tank CESCI, resulting in numerous publications and participation in common projects. As an example, the output of one such project can be traced here: https://budapest.cesci-net.eu/en/fantom-hatar/. The coordinator of the network Péter Balogh has been involved in international projects devoted to border studies on a regular basis. Recent examples include projects supported by the British Academy, ZOiS (Berlin), as well as the Horizon Programme.

Additionally the members of the department sit in the editorial boards of scientific journals. The department’ s head Ferenc Gyuris is in the board of Hungarian Geographical Bulletin, an English-language journal ranked in the Q2 category (Scimago) ever since 2017. Further, Zsolt Bottlik is deputy editor-in-chief of Földrajzi Közlemények, the country’s prime Hungarian-language geographical journal.

CEEPUS Coordinator – Péter Balogh, PhD (assistant professor at the Department of Social and Economic Geography within the  Institute of Geography and Earth Sciences, Faculty of Science)

peter.balogh@ttk.elte.hu

Péter Balogh’s main interests include political geography and border studies. More specifically, he is interested in how power is legitimized by various ideas and labels which get associated with certain territories, thus essentializing their characteristics and facilitating a sort of spatial identity politics. Péter is also interested in questions of peripherality and regional development, at borders and beyond.

To find out more about Péter: https://tgf.elte.hu/baloghpeter_en