Congratulations to our Senior Research Fellow Zsolt Enyedi for the CEU Research Excellence Award, and Balazs Trencsenyi, lead researcher of our Democracy in History Workgroup for the CEU Community Service Excellence Award!
Zsolt Enyedi’s book, Party System Closure: Party Alliances, Government Alternatives, and Democracy in Europe (co-authored with Fernando Casal Bertoa), was published by Oxford University Press in 2021 and won the best book award of the Spanish Association of Political and Administrative Sciences. It was also the runner-up for the Stein Rokkan Prize, the best book award of the European Consortium for Political Research. Under his leadership, CEU won a Horizon Europe grant (Neo- authoritarianisms in Europe and the liberal democratic response, AUTHLIB) in 2022. Zsolt has successfully supervised 14 PhD students and is part of numerous PhD supervisory panels. He has published over 100 articles and several books; runs a podcast series, and contributes to the successful operation of the Department of Political Science and the DI.
Balazs Trencsenyi, who is also a Professor in the Department of History and the Director of the History in the Public Sphere Erasmus Mundus MA program, is one of the main organizers of the Invisible University for Ukraine (IUFU), a certificate program (offering ECTS credits) for junior and senior undergraduate (BA) and graduate (MA and PhD) students from Ukraine, whether residing in Ukraine or in refuge, whose studies have been affected by the war. He has been described as “…the intellectual within civil society…”, who remains committed to addressing the most pressing issues of our time and has the leadership qualities and organizational acumen to do so in an impactful and sustained way. Balazs is an outstanding resource mobilizer and has been excellent in public outreach efforts, especially for IUFU. Everything he has done, and continues to do for IUFU, sets the bar in bringing together academic excellence, purpose-driven social service with principles of social justice, and an open society.
Every year, CEU honors the achievements of outstanding faculty, staff, and students through several distinguished awards. This year’s awardees exemplify that through their contributions within and beyond CEU.