About

Laszlo Bruszt

Editor-in-chief

László Bruszt, Co-director of the CEU Democracy Institute, is Professor of Sociology at the Central European University. During the regime change in 1989 he served as National Secretary of the newly formed independent trade unions and has represented them in the Roundtable Negotiations. He started to teach at CEU in 1992 and has served as its Acting Rector and President in 1996/97. Between 2004 and 2016 he was teaching at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. His publications focus on issues of regime change and economic transformation. His more recent studies deal with the politics of economic integration of the Eastern and Southern peripheries of Europe

Ece Ozbey

Co-managing Editor

Ece Özbey is a doctoral researcher and lecturer at the University of Cologne, where she is pursuing her PhD in Comparative Politics through the IMPRS-SPCE program. Previously she was a Global Forum Fellow at CEU Democracy Institute, and a Global Editor at RevDem. She holds an MSc in European Studies and a BSc in International Relations. Her research focuses on populism, Euroskepticism, political competition, and radicalization, mainly in European democracies. An affiliate of the METU Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence, she has also contributed to and published on European integration and EU-Turkey relations. Ece has held visiting positions at prestigious institutions in the US, the UK, and Chile. She is a founding member of OPUS Young Researchers Initiative on Populism and an active member of a variety of other research networks such as Team Populism and the FEPS Young Academics Network.

Robert Nemeth

Co-managing Editor

Robert Nemeth works as Communications and Outreach Officer for the CEU Democracy Institute, and is a Journalism Expert at the Media and Journalism Research Center. Previously, he served as Outreach Coordinator for the CEU Center for Media, Data and Society. Prior to joining CEU, he had a 15-year-long career in journalism, in various positions ranging from journalist to Senior Editor and Senior News Producer. He was also guest lecturer at the Department of Media and Communication at ELTE. Robert graduated in History and in Media Studies at the Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE) in Budapest, then obtained an MA in Sociology and Social Anthropology at CEU.

Kinga Agnes Pall

Senior Manager

Kinga Ágnes Páll is Senior Program Manager at the CEU Democracy Institute (DI), managing the Invisible University for Ukraine (IUFU) project and the Review of Democracy. She has a background in Political Science and Law and has been working at CEU since 2001 in various positions.

Anubha Anushree

Editor

Anubha Anushree is an Associate Professor at the Department of English, Rajdhani College, University of Delhi. She completed her PhD from the Department of History, Stanford University in 2023. Her thesis examines instances of corruption from colonial and postcolonial India and argues for a nuanced approach to the contemporary understanding of the modern Indian history. Apart from contributing to studies on Global History of Colonial Corruption (2021), she has published in journals, Itinerario and Journal of Asian Studies. More recently, she is interested in examining the history of disability and its intersections with caste in South Asia, and in the political architecture of modernity and its global heritage. Anubha has also worked extensively on the script cultures of India with a specialization on Kaithi and Modi scripts.

Alexandra Kardos

Editor

Alexandra Kardos is the Editor for the "History of Ideas" section. She received her PhD in Comparative History from the Central European University in 2020. Her main research interests include European and global intellectual history, religion and politics, and political thought and literature. During her doctoral studies, she held visiting fellowships at Cornell University, the Leibniz Institute for European History, and Kazan Federal University. She has also been a guest lecturer at the London School of Economics, Corvinus University, and Eötvös Loránd University, where she taught courses on Russian and Soviet history. Additionally, she has experience in research communication, marketing, and translation.

Konstantin Kipp

Editor

Konstantin Kipp is a doctoral candidate at the Jacques Delors Centre of the Hertie School and an editor for the Rule of Law section of the Review of Democracy. His research examines the potential for democratic backsliding at the European Union level. He holds an LL.M. in Comparative Constitutional Law from Central European University and studied law at the Universities of Potsdam and Paris Nanterre. Previously, he worked for the Research Services of the German Bundestag, in the Constitutional and European Law Department of a leading German law firm and the Agence France Presse. His broader research interests include Constitutional, European Union and International Law with a specific focus on authoritarianism in the 21st century.

Adrian Matus

Editor

Adrian Matus, an educator and scholar, is Editor of the Democracy and Culture section. He defended his PhD in History at the European University Institute in 2022. Subsequently, he wrote a book about the hippie movement in Hungary and Romania during socialist times. Previously he graduated from Université Sorbonne Paris IV and Babeș-Bolyai University from Cluj-Napoca. From 2020 to 2022, he curated the "Communist Parties from Non-Socialist Countries" collection at the Blinken Open Society Archives, then continued researching this topic as a postdoctoral fellow at the New Europe College Bucharest. Adrian also worked on various educational initiatives, designing history, cultural studies and social sciences syllabi for high-school students, asylum-seekers, refugees, or people who had experienced forced displacement. His main academic interests are public history, educational outreach, library and archival dissemination.

Gabriel Pereira

Editor

Gabriel Pereira is permanent researcher at the Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Cientificas y Tecnologicas of Argentina (CONICET) and a Human Rights Professor at the National University of Tucumán (Argentina). He is also an affiliated researcher to the Latin American Centre of the University of Oxford. He completed his PhD in Politics at the same University in 2014, and holds a Master’s Degree in Social Science (Democracy and Democratization) from the University College London, and a Law Degree from the National University of Tucuman. He has written in journals and in books on fields including transitional justice, business and human rights, human rights, and judicial politics, and recently co-authored two books on corporate complicity in transitional justice contexts. He is also a founder and president of the human rights organization Andhes.

Kristof Szombati

Editor

Kristóf Szombati is an Editor responsible for the Political Economy and Inequalities section at RevDem. He has a background in both politics and academia. He co-founded the green LMP party in his native Hungary, which he left in 2011 to pursue a doctorate at CEU on the rise of anti-Gypsyism and right-wing politics. Since defending his PhD (2016), he has published several articles and a monograph titled The Revolt of the Provinces (2018, Berghahn), worked as an advisor to Greenpeace, and pursued his scholarly interest in the political economy of illiberalism as István Deák visiting assistant professor at Columbia University, as a post-doctoral research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle, and currently as a research fellow at the Institute for European Ethnology at Humboldt University in Berlin.

Lilit Hakobyan

Audio Editor

Lilit Hakobyan is an audio editor at RevDem. She holds an MA in Gender Studies from Central European University. She has a professional background in non-formal education as an educator and a programs manager. Her academic interests include the intersection of gender and nationalism, gendered policies and practices in education, and feminist research praxis.

Alina Young

Audio Editor

Alina Young is an audio editor at RevDem. She holds an MA in Gender Studies from the Central European University, and a BSc in International Relations and History from the London School of Economics. She previously worked at the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, facilitating projects on critical infrastructure protection. Her main research interests include feminist geographies and critical urbanism.

Ferenc Laczo

Coordinator, Journal of Democracy Partnership

Ferenc Laczó is former Co-managing Editor at RevDem, and an Assistant Professor with Tenure in History at Maastricht University. In 2024, he was István Deák Visiting Assistant Professor at the Harriman Institute, Columbia University. He received his PhD from the Central European University in 2011 and was previously employed as a postdoctoral researcher at the Imre Kertész Kolleg Jena. He is the author or editor of thirteen books on Hungarian, Jewish, German, European, and global themes. His most recent book publication is Magyarország globális története (A Global History of Hungary) in two volumes (Budapest: Corvina, 2022-23), which he has co-edited with Bálint Varga and András Vadas. His writings have appeared in fourteen languages and his books have been discussed in more than fifty publications.

Saumya Aanchal

Assistant Editor

Saumya Aanchal is an independent researcher and writer based in India. She holds an MA in English Literature and specializes in feminist theory, memory studies, and the politics of South Asian folk and indigenous art forms, with particular emphasis on Mithila (Madhubani) painting and its democratic and counter-hegemonic possibilities. Her work examines the intersections of gender, collective memory, visual culture, and democratic expression in postcolonial contexts. Saumya has published in various Maithili and English-language outlets, and her creative writing appears in three literary anthologies. Her artwork exploring the traditional Kohbar motif has been exhibited. She also runs a virtual reading group on cultural and democratic theory that fosters critical discussion and collaborative learning.

Kutup Aytekin

Assistant Editor

Kutup Aytekin is a PhD researcher at the European University Institute. His academic interests encompass political economy, authoritarian regimes, and democratic backsliding. He contributes to the Review of Democracy as an assistant editor.

Jonathan Bergman

Assistant Editor

Jonathan Bergman is an assistant editor at the Review of Democracy. He is currently pursuing an MA in international relations and holds a BA MA in history from his previous studies. His primary interests in history lie in political history, intellectual history, historical culture and historical memory, whereas his primary interests in international relations lie in foreign policy analysis, security studies and international relations theory.

Diana Bernardini

Assistant Editor

Diana Bernardini holds an MA in Human Rights and Governance from the Hertie School and an LLB in European Law from Maastricht University. During her studies, she taught European Human Rights at Maastricht University, worked as a communications assistant at the Global Public Policy Institute, and supported the Hertie’s Centre for Fundamental Rights as a research assistant, where she conducted a framing analysis of strategic arguments in climate change litigation before the European Court of Human Rights. Her research interests focus on the role of courts in shaping democratic space and human rights amidst authoritarian shifts in liberal democracies, as well as a critical examination of civil disobedience in judicial contexts, particularly in relation to recent actions by climate activist movements.

Mariia Dotsenko

Assistant Editor

Mariia Dotsenko is a PhD researcher in history at V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University. Her scientific interests are connected with historiography, intellectual history, history of international scientific communication, world heritage studies, urban studies, gender studies. She is also working as a coordinator of the international research project "Digital Heritage in Ukraine: Documenting Digital Projects" and as an assistant of the coordinator of the international research project "Transformations in the cultural landscapes of the major cities of eastern and southern Ukraine during the Russo-Ukrainian War."

Karolina Godal

Assistant Editor

Karolina Godal is currently pursuing her doctoral research at Charles University in Prague, focusing on the Rule of Law instruments of the European Union from a broader European perspective. Her research compares the approaches of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) and the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), with a particular emphasis on Poland. As a lawyer, Karolina has experience in both the private and public sectors, having served as a government advisor. She was also posted to Brussels during the Czech Presidency of the Council of the EU as an expert on post-Brexit relations with the United Kingdom.

Suhail Farooq Khan

Assistant Editor

Suhail Farooq Khan is an Assistant Professor and practicing Advocate at the High Court of Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh. He holds an LL.M. in Comparative Constitutional Law from Central European University, Vienna, focusing on comparative constitutional doctrines, and a distinguished B.A.LL.B. (Hons.) from University of Kashmir. His professional background includes serving as a VALE Fellow at the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy, where he specialized in Corporate Law and Financial Regulation. He has practical experience in civil and criminal litigation, corporate dispute resolution, and legal research on Child Rights and Human Rights. Suhail is also a Mentor with Project EduAccess, dedicated to improving access to higher education for marginalized communities.

Jan Młynarczyk

Assistant Editor

Jan Młynarczyk graduated with an LLB from the London School of Economics and Political Science, with a year abroad at Sciences Po Paris. He currently works as Legal Editor at FromCounsel, a legal knowledge firm, and Research Assistant to Dr Marie Petersmann at the LSE Law School. His research focuses on the rule of law in transnational contexts.

Quin Nugteren

Assistant Editor

Quin Nugteren is currently pursuing a Dual Degree MA in History in the Public Sphere at Central European University and Tokyo University of Foreign Studies. He graduated with a BA in Modern History from Leiden University, while running Leidschrift historical journal as editor-in-chief. He gained further experience as a freelance journalist and museum educator in the Netherlands. His research interests lie in transnational intellectual history, the history of political culture and contemporary memory wars.

Paris O’Keeffe-Johnston

Assistant Editor

Paris O’Keeffe-Johnston holds an MA in International Relations, Conflict & Security from Northumbria University. Her research focuses on political communication and the role of language in shaping power dynamics within democracies. She is interested in how political actors use linguistic strategies to influence public discourse and mobilize support. Her work also examines the societal risks posed by AI-generated narratives in democratic societies, particularly as a threat multiplier that exacerbates political tensions, including migration and nationalism.

Ishita Prasher

Assistant Editor

Ishita Prasher is a postgraduate literature student based in Delhi, India. She holds both her undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in English Literature from Miranda House, University of Delhi. Her research interests include postcolonial studies, feminist criticism, and Indian literature, with a particular focus on Partition literature. Ishita is also intrigued by how cultural modes—such as literature, cinema, music, and art—engage with political organizations, marginality, democracy, and exclusion, both discursively and non-discursively.

Maxime Stebach

Assistant Editor

Maxime Stebach is an assistant editor at RevDem. He holds an MA in Ecological Governance from Sciences Po. He has a professional background in non-formal education as a journalist and data analyst. His academic interests include sociology of political organizations, political psychology, electoral studies, and progressive politics.