Balazs Trencsenyi

Balázs Trencsényi is a Professor at the Department of Historical Studies of Central European University in Vienna, and Director of the CEU Institute for Advanced Study in Budapest. Between 2013-17, he was director of the MA Program in Comparative History at CEU; between 2017-19, head of the Department of History; between 2019-23, director of the History in the Public Sphere Erasmus Mundus Plus program. Between 2008-13, PI of the ERC Starting Grant, “Negotating Modernity.” Held research fellowships at CAS Sofia; IWM Vienna; Imre Kertész Kolleg Jena; Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin; and Centre Marc Bloch, Berlin. In 2022, he was among the initiators of the Invisible University for Ukraine. His main field of interest is the his­tory of modern political thought in East Central Europe. Among others, he is the author of The Politics of “National Character”: A Study in Interwar East European Thought (Routledge, 2012) and Intellectuals and the Crisis of Politics in the Interwar Period and Beyond (OUP, 2025); co-author of A History of Modern Political Thought in East Central Europe, vols. I-II (OUP, 2016-8); and co-editor of Brave New Hungary: Mapping the "System of National Cooperation” (Rowman and Littlefield, 2019).