András Kovács (sociologist)


András Kovács is a Hungarian sociologist and historian. He is a professor at Central European University, Budapest, in the Nationalism Studies Program / Jewish Studies Program. Furthermore, Kovács is a Doctor of Sciences at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

Biography

He graduated with a degree in philosophy and history in 1971 at the Eötvös Loránd University, Faculty of Philosophy, Budapest.
From 1972 through 1978, he worked as an editor at a publishing house.
In 1978 he was dismissed for political reasons and banned from professional activity in Hungary because of clandestine publication of the first samisdat volume in Hungary under the title "Marx in the Fourth Decade".
Between 1978 and 1989 free-lance translator, and active member of the democratic opposition to the communist regime.
Between 1980 and 1983 he was visiting professor/researcher at Paderborn University, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, New York University, TH Twente.
He initiated the first systematic research on post-Holocaust Hungarian Jewry, and published the first results in publications of the democratic opposition.
After the democratic transition, he taught as professor at the Eötvös Loránd University and served as senior research fellow at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Between 1989 and 1995 he was the head of the political advisory board of the Fidesz Party, and the personal advisor of the later prime minister, Viktor Orbán. In 1997, he became a professor at the Central European University, and in 2002 director of its Jewish Studies program. After 1988 he was guest lecturer/scholar at the Salomon Steinheim Institut für Deutsch-Jüdische Geschichte, Duisburg, Germany, the Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen, Vienna, Austria, the Moses Mendelssohn Zentrum für Jüdische Studien, Potsdam, Germany, the Internationales Forschungszentrum Kulturwissenschaften, Vienna, Austria, the Institut für Soziologie, Universität Wien, as well as the Zentrum für Antisemitismusforschung, TU Berlin.

Academic works

His main research subjects are contemporary antisemitism, Jews in post-war Hungary, Jewish policy of Communist parties; memory and identity; contemporary far right in Europe.
Until 2020 he published more than 150 works in several languages. His most important publications in English: