Biography

My research interests include the history of sexuality, women and gender history and the history of sport in modern East-Central Europe. More specifically, I focus on the relationship between different political systems and the regulation of non-normative behaviours and identities.
I defended my Ph.D. in history at Rutgers University under the guidance of Belinda Davis and Paul Hanebrink in August 2012. My dissertation, Sex in the “Pearl of the Danube”: The History of Queer life, Love, and its Regulation in Budapest, 1873-1939, maps the changing medical, legal, and cultural understandings of queer sexuality in Hungary.

Exploring the relationship between the evolution of the modern East-Central European state and sexuality, my research reveals how political conservatism and tolerance of non-normative sexualities could coexist prior to WWII.

I completed my M.Sc. degree in Gender and Social Policy at the London School of Economics in 2004, where I wrote my M.A. thesis on Hungarian family policy.  I received my undergraduate degree from the University of California, Berkeley in 2002, where my history thesis examined the Hungarian Communist Party’s implementation of socialist law during the 1950s.

As a Max Weber Fellow under the mentorship of Pavel Kolar, I intend to turn my dissertation into a book manuscript on the study of queer history in East-Central Europe and publish an article on how sports functioned as a tool of social integration under the Hungarian Communist regime.

My teaching experience includes teaching undergraduate classes of my own design on the history of the Holocaust and expository writing, and being a Teaching Assistant for multiple modern European survey classes. At the EUI I will co-teach a graduate seminar with Professor Pavel Kolar on the history of the modern state.