Contemporary Budapest: Politics, Conflict & Culture

Kata was born in Kolozsvár (Klausenburg), Romania, and graduated from Babes Bolyai University. She received her PhD in 2006 in contemporary Jewish studies from the department of Ethnology at Budapest's Eötvös Lóránd University. As a PhD student she studied and conducted field work in Israel, Spain, and South Africa. Her publications include the co-authored book "Dialogues on Teaching Critical Literature" (2003), and the single-authored books "Tradition, Memory, Identity. The Foundation Myth of Exodus" (2005), and "Visszatérők a tradícióhoz Return to the Tradition" (2009). The latter book describes the return of the Hungarian Jews to the Jewish tradition and the reconstruction of their Jewish identity after the fall of communism. Kata has also published several articles in medieval literature, ethnology and cultural anthropology, and urban studies. Currently she is a professor at Eötvös Lóránd University in Budapest.

Eszter Susán holds in MA in the Theory of Art and is an active member of the Jewish youth community in Budapest. For the past four years she has done extensive research on the past history and present culture of Budapest's Jewish community.

Szonja is a research fellow at the Institute of Minority Studies at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and teaches at the Department of Assyriology and Hebrew at the ELTE University in Budapest. She lived and studied in Budapest, Oxford, Jerusalem and New York, holds MA degrees in English Studies and Jewish Studies from ELTE University in Budapest, and an MSt in Jewish Studies and a DPhil in Modern Languages / Yiddish from the University of Oxford. Her main field of research and interest is Hungarian Jewish history and cultural history, and she is especially intrigued by issues related to changes in national identity and language choice. She has lectured and published extensively in her field, in English, Hungarian, Hebrew and Yiddish. As a native of Budapest and as a tour guide, she is interested in the various layers of the city – historical, social and architectural alike.