Selected Alumni Profiles

Jakub Gawkowski

April 20, 2021

Jakub Gawkowski (MA 2019) works as a curator at the Modern Art Department of the Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź. At the museum, he curates temporary exhibitions and co-curates the permanent display of the collection of 20th and 21st-century art. Before CEU, he also studied at the University of Warsaw and the University of Silesia in Katowice. Most recently, he curated Riga Notebook: Following the Lines of Wacław Szpakowski (with Inga Lāce) at the Muzeum Sztuki, an exhibition centered around the life and work of a Polish pioneer of geometric abstraction.

Yulia Karpova

March 2, 2021

Yulia Karpova (MA 2009, PhD 2015) is a historian of Soviet and European art and design. In 2016-2018 she was a postdoctoral fellow at the School of Communication and Culture at Aarhus University, Denmark. Later she worked as a visiting lecturer at CEU and as an assistant archivist at Open Society Archives. Her book, Comradely Objects: Design and Material Cculture in Soviet Russia, 1960s–80s, was published by Manchester University Press in 2020.

Victor Taki

December 14, 2020

Victor Taki (MA 2002, PhD 2008) has taught at the University of Alberta (2009 – 2010), Dalhousie University (2010 – 2011), the King’s University (2014 – 2019) and Concordia University of Edmonton (since 2016).

Adrian Grama

June 21, 2020

Adrian Grama (PhD 2017) is Principal Investigator of the DFG funded project “Dominant Fictions” at the Institut für Ost- und Südosteuropaforschung in Regensburg, Germany. His first book was a social history of metalworkers and miners in postwar Romania.

Caroline Mezger

Caroline Mezger (MA 2012) is a historian at the Leibniz Institute for Contemporary History (IfZ) in Munich. She holds degrees in history from Yale University (BA, 2010) and Central European University (MA, 2012), as well as a PhD in History and Civilization from the European University Institute in Florence (2016).

Gábor Kármán

Gábor Kármán (MA 2003 and PhD 2010) is a senior research fellow at the Research Center for the Humanities (until recently of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Institute of History since 2013. He currently leads an ERC Consolidator Grant on the shared qualities observable in the diplomacy of individual small states situated on the border between the Ottoman Empire and Christianity in the 16th to 18th centuries. After CEU, he spent six years at the Research Center for the History and Culture of East Central Europe (GWZO) i

Marijana Kardum

Marijana Kardum, is a Teaching/Research Assistant at the University of Zagreb (Faculty of Teacher Education) and a researcher of the international research project Modern Women Thinkers (http://mmz.ufzg.hr/en/about/ and http://mmz.ufzg.hr/en/who-are-we/).

Anastasia Felcher

Anastasia Felcher is an archivist responsible for the Slavic Collection at the Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives of the CEU. She completed her MA at the CEU (2010) and her PhD at the IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca (2016). She is currently working on her first book, tentatively titled Jewish Cultural Heritage post-1989. Debates on Memory and Preservation in Eastern Europe.

Goran Miljan

Goran Miljan (MA 2009, PhD 2016) currently works as a researcher at the Hugo Valentin Centre, Department of History, Uppsala University. At the moment he is the lead researcher on the project The Unwanted Citizens: The Holocaust and the Aryanization of Jewish Property in Romania and the Independent State of Croatia (NDH), 1940-1945, funded by Marcus och Amalia Wallenbergs Foundation and a researcher on the project Segmented Narratives, Conflicting Histories: Social Memory about the Second World War in the Western Balkans, 1989–2018.

Olga Kartashova

Olga Kartashova is a doctoral student at the Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies, New York University and a contractor researcher at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies.

Agnes Kelemen

Agnes completed her Ph.D. at CEU's History Department in 2019. In her dissertation she investigated the connection between academic antisemitism, social mobility and migration through a sociological study of the “numerus clausus exiles” (students who left interwar Hungary due to the antisemitic law restricting Jewish access to higher education). Examining this interwar migratory movement of Jewish youth who often saw themselves as refugees escaping antisemitism brought Agnes to the topic of refugees in a more literal sense.

Kateryna Pasichnyk

Kateryna Pasichnyk is a PhD Candidate of the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg. The focus of her current research is on the transformation of values in the eighteenth-century medical community of the Russian Empire and their manifestations within physicians’ activities and interactions with each other and laymen. 

"What I like about CEU: considerable support throughout each step of one's academic journey as well as a life-long feeling of belonging to the CEU community."

Anastasiia Strakhova

Anastasiia Strakhova (MA) is a Perilman Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Center for Jewish Studies at Duke University. After CEU, she completed her PhD at Emory University (Atlanta, GA) in 2022 with a dissertation entitled “Selective Emigration: Border Control and the Jewish Escape in Late Imperial Russia, 1881-1914.”

James Gresock

I graduated from CEU’s 2-year MA program in Comparative History in 2017 with an advanced certificate in Religious Studies. My time at CEU had a profound influence on my work, both by encouraging intensive academic rigor, and in shaping my historical perspective. I am now a PhD student in the University of Minnesota’s History Department where I work with their Center for Austrian Studies researching the impacts of propagandistic media on historical memory.

Levente Olosz

Levente Olosz completed his MA at the Department of History in 2015. The title of his thesis was "Facts and Debates about the Integration of the Hungarian Speaking Jews into Israeli Society (1948-1955)". Currently, he is a PhD student of the Károly Eszterházy University in Eger. His current project concerns the history of Zionism in Transylvania.

Iryna Vushko

January 28, 2020

Irnya Vushko is Assistant Professor of History at Princeton University. She completed her MA at CEU and her PhD at Yale University (2008). Her book, The Politics of Cultural Retreat: Imperial Bureaucracy in Austrian Galicia, 1772-1867, appeared in 2015 with Yale University Press.

Adam Mestyan

November 18, 2019

Adam Mestyan completed his PhD at CEU in 2011, and he is currently Assistant Professor of History at Duke University. Previous to his appointment he was Junior Fellow in the Society of Fellows at Harvard University and taught in the Middle East Centre of St Antony's College, Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Oxford. He was a post-doctoral fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin.

Roxana Maria Aras

November 17, 2019

Roxana Maria Aras (MA, CEU 2015; currently PhD student in the Anthro-History Department at the University of Michigan). 

Tyler Conklin

November 17, 2019

Tyler Conklin (CEU MA 2014, Currently at Yale University for a PhD in History (Early Modern Middle East) since 2014), After Completing my BA at the University of Minnesota in History I enrolled in the two-year MA History program at CEU. CEU's excellent scholarly environment, including both fellow students and faculty, greatly prepared me for my further endeavors in academia which I am currently pursuing at Yale University.

Alexander Semyonov

November 17, 2019

Alexander M. Semyonov (MA '98, Ph.D. '06) is currently Professor and Chair, of the Department of History of National Research University-Higher School of Economics in St. Petersburg.

Y. Doğan Çetinkaya

November 14, 2019

Y. Doğan Çetinkaya defended his MA thesis at CEU in 2004. He is currently a faculty member at Istanbul University. After CEU, he received his PhD at Leiden University (Netherlands) in 2010. In 2017 he became the vice-president of History Foundation, the largest independent organisation of historians in Turkey. He gives lectures and organises workshops in Free University-Istanbul since 2010. In 2012-2013 he was a visiting scholar at Panteion University in Athens.

Olha Martynyuk

February 21, 2019

Olha Martynyuk (MA in 2010) is currently a Senior Lecturer at the National Technical University "Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute". In this same academic institution she has finished a doctoral program and defended her dissertation in February 2017. She has been a fellow researcher at the Institute for Human Studies (Vienna, 2011-2012), the German Historical Institute in Moscow (2013, 2014) and University of Maryland, Baltimore County (Fulbright program, 2018-2019).

Ana-Teodora Kurkina

November 7, 2017

Ana-Teodora Kurkina (MA 2013; since 2014 PhD Student, Graduate School for East and Southeast European Studies Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich/University of Regensburg).

Teodora Shek Brnardić

November 6, 2017

Teodora Shek Brnardić (PhD 2004), currently Senior Research Fellow at the Croatian Institute of History, Zagreb. 

Vladimir Petrović

August 31, 2017

Vladimir Petrović (MA 2005, PhD 2009, currently Senior Academic Researcher at the Centre for the Study of Europe, Boston University and Senior Researcher at the Institute for Contemporary History, Belgrade) 

Jian Zhang

January 12, 2016

Jian Zhang (MA in Comparative History, CEU 2015, Ph.D. student at the Department of History, University of Michigan)

M. Fatih Calisir

November 23, 2015

M. Fatih Calisir completed two MA programs, one on Comparative History of Central Europe at CEU and the other on Ottoman History at Bilkent University (2009). Before enrolling in Early Modern European History PhD Program at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, he worked as an assistant expert at the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism. His research interests include early modern history of the Ottoman Empire, Ottoman cultural history, and environmental history.

Ferenc Laczó

September 1, 2015

Ferenc Laczó (PhD 2011), currently assistant professor in modern and contemporary European history at Maastricht University, formerly lecturer in the same function (2015 to 2016), before that researcher at the Imre Kertész Kolleg Jena (2010 to 2015).​

Maria Falina

August 12, 2015

Maria Falina (MA 2005, PhD 2011) currently is lecturer in modern European history at the School of History and Geography, Dublin City University. Prior to her current position, she was lecturer and postdoc fellow at the Centre for War Studies, University College Dublin.

Ievgeniia Sakal

June 25, 2015

Ievgeniia Sakal (MA CEU 2012, currently at Yale University for a PhD in History). My year as an MA student at Central European University was certainly unforgettable. Because my scholarly interests were at a crossroads of early-modern intellectual and Eastern European religious history, my case was approached individually.  I could take classes both from the History and Medieval Studies departments and I was also enrolled in the Religious Studies Program. Thus, I benefited from a whole range of subjects that corresponded perfectly with my scholarly interests.

Kateryna Dysa

February 10, 2014

Kateryna Dysa defended her PhD dissertation at CEU in 2004. Currently she is an Associate Professor at National University of 'Kyiv-Mohyla Academy'. She is also the director of the Center for Polish and European Studies of NaUKMA. In 2009 she was a Chopivsky Fellow in Ukrainian Studies at Stanford University, and in 2011 she was a Shklar Research Fellow at Ukrainian Research Institute, Harvard University. In 2010 she was a Research Fellow of the project The "centre" and the "periphery" in the religious history of early modern Eastern Europe at L'Institut d'Etudes Avancées, Paris.

Marius Turda

February 10, 2014

Marius Turda completed his doctoral studies at CEU in 2002. He is currently an associate professor in the Faculty of History, Philosophy and Religion at Oxford Brookes University and Director of its Centre for Medical Humanities. He was founding director of the Cantemir Institute at the University of Oxford (2012-13). He also founded the Working Group on the History of Race and Eugenics (HRE) in 2006 at Oxford Brookes University and he coordinates the book series CEU Studies in the History of Medicine.

Katherine Sorrels

February 10, 2014

Katherine Sorrels received her MA from CEU in 2000. She is currently Associate Professor of the History at the University of Cincinnati in Cincinnati, Ohio. She chose to attend CEU after studying in a similar international environment at the University of Graz during her undergraduate study. In the words of Sorrels, "I've benefitted tremendously from my year at CEU. First of all, I took a range of excellent courses in history and several of the interdisciplinary programs (e.g., Gender Studies and Nationalism Studies).

Ana Sekulic

February 10, 2014

Ana Sekulic (MA 2013; since 2013 PhD Student, Princeton University). After finishing my BA at Wesleyan University, I enrolled in the one-year MA at CEU's Department of History. I chose CEU because of the excellent reputation of the program and its faculty members.

Markian Prokopovych

February 10, 2014

Markian Prokopovych, currently at the Durham University  in the UK and fellow at Pasts Inc. Center for Historical Studies at CEU, completed his PhD at CEU in 2004.

Máté Rigó

February 10, 2014

Máté Rigó (MA 2009, Assistant Professor, Yale NUS college). "CEU has one of the strongest concentrations of scholars working on East-Central Europe within Anglo-American academia, and as I was committed to study the history of the region I decided to apply. My year as an M.A. student at the CEU History Department enabled me to achieve a thorough grounding in regional historiography, and become familiar with multiple perspectives, theories and methods of writing history, ranging from intellectual, urban and cultural history.

Jaroslav Miller

February 10, 2014

Jaroslav Miller completed his doctoral studies at CEU in 2004, having begun as an MA student in 1996. He is currently the Rector of Palacký University, Olomouc, Czech Republic. He has twice been appointed an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow (2006 in Marburg, 2010 in Münster), and in 2008 was a Fulbright Fellow at the University of Georgia, USA. During the 2010-2011 academic year, he held a Guest Professorship at the University of Western Australia in Perth and is a 2012 nominee for the Gerda Henkel Prize.

Bojan Aleksov

February 10, 2014

Bojan Aleksov received his PhD at CEU and is now associate professor at University College London School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies. Prior to his current position, he was a Humboldt Fellow at Freie Universität Berlin and a Max Weber Fellow at European University Institute in Florence, Italy.

Liliya Berezhnaya

February 6, 2014

Liliya Berezhnaya (PhD 2004) has worked for Pasts Inc. Center for Historical Studies at CEU and was a post-doctoral fellow at Ludwig-Maximilians Universität in Munich for two years. Since 2009 she has been directing the project "Religion and Politics" in the Cluster of Excellency at the University of Münster within her habilitation track. Parallel to that she teaches East European history in the History Department at the University of Münster.