Are interethnic marriages bridges or fault lines in post-conflict societies? What happens when the politics of national identity enter the intimacy of home? Who were the main agents to oppose or promote mixed marriages in East-Central Europe? Was it the Church? Was it the legal framework? Were it depending on local culture? Was it determined by class?
In our podcast in two parts, we discuss this topic with Karolina Lendák-Kabók and Lucija Balikić, around their research project called entitled “Mixed Families: Searching for Identity and Belonging in Post-Conflict Societies”. Their research group emerges from the The Momentum (Lendület) 2025 project hosted at Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE), Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Minority Studies and it is financed by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences – Flagship Program of the Academy.
By following marriages that crossed lines of language, confession, and social status, the research project “Mixed Families: Searching for Identity and Belonging in Post-Conflict Societies” trace how states, churches, and communities sought to regulate intimacy long before they regulated borders.
Our first part begins by discussing the intellectual curiosities that led to this project and the main research questions. Then, the discussion moves to a careful unpacking of the project’s main term, mixedness, and why it offers a productive lens for studying interethnic marriages.
The episode then turns to the choice of cases: Hungary and the post‑Yugoslav space. Listeners will learn what makes these regions comparable, how their shared imperial and socialist legacies matter.
Karolina Lendák-Kabók is a social scientist with a specific interest in the intersection of gender, ethnicity, education and families. She was a Marie Sklodowksa-Curie IF at the Faculty of Social Sciences, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest from 2022-2024. Currently, she is an Associate Professor at the same university, at the Faculty of Social Sciences. Her book, National Minorities in Serbian Academia: The Role of Gender and Language Barriers, was published in 2022. Within this project, Karolina is the Principal Investigator.
Lucija Balikić defended her PhD at the Central European University by focusing on the intellectual history of the Sokol Movement in Interwar Yugoslavia. She was a Global Teaching Fellow at the Corvinus University. Her academic interests broadly include the social and intellectual history of the late Habsburg Monarchy and interwar Yugoslavia. Within MIXED, Lucija is a postdoctoral researcher focusing on the historical components.
The podcat was conducted by Adrian Matus. Alina Young edited the audio file.
