Research Group for Prosopography and Family History
Overview
Prosopography is an original discipline of social history, encompassing genealogical, nomenclatural and demographic traditions. More specifically, it is the collective, statistically based study of a defined group of individuals. To this end, it collects data on individuals in an attempt to describe both the fixed and the changing characteristics of the group they form. Prosopographical research focuses on the person, his or her environment and social status, i.e. the person in the context of his or her family and other groups in society, the place and situation in which he or she was active and the role and function he or she played in society.
Lately, focus of our research group's interest is on the knowledge elite within the broader field of elite studies, which began in the mid-1980s. The elite research of the Research Group for Prosopography and Family History focuses on the careers of Hungarian university professors during the civil era and between the two world wars, and on the changes in the social status and life situation of individuals. By examining the life courses and professional careers of university teachers, the elite research based at the Department of Comparative Historical Sociology provides insights into the processes taking place in the society of the period under study, the possibilities and realisation of intergenerational and intra-generational mobility.
In the past years our Research Group collaborated with the Department of Digital Humanities (ELTE Faculty of Humanity) in the #elitdata project: working together, our aim was to make the data from existing elite research WikiData-based, so that our data can also serve as a basis for international research in the online space. WikiData connects the worlds of historical research and information technology: the wide availability of databases and the exploration of the relationships between variables from new perspectives enables to broaden the research questions in the field of historical sociology.
Parallelly, an OTKA (Hungarian Scientific Research Fund) funded research (No. 128942, principal investigator: Gábor I. Kovács) is being conducted on the multi-generational family histories of Hungarian university professors in the period from 1848 to 1944.
Research group members
- Zsuzsanna KISS, associate professor, senior researcher, head of research group, Department of Comparative Historical Sociology, Faculty of Social Sciences, ELTE, Budapest, Hungary
- Gábor I. KOVÁCS, honorary professor, senior researcher, Department of Comparative Historical Sociology, Faculty of Social Sciences, ELTE, Budapest, Hungary
- György KÖVÉR, professor, senior researcher, Department of Economic and Social History, Faculty of Humanity, ELTE, Budapest, Hungary
- Árpád TAKÁCS, department secretary, Department of Comparative Historical Sociology, Faculty of Social Sciences, ELTE, Budapest, Hungary
- Diána BARTHA, MA Student, Computer and Cognitive Neuroscience, Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Budapest, Hungary
- Csenge KONDOROSY, PhD student, Atelier Interdisciplinary PhD Programme, Faculty of Humanity, ELTE, Budapest, Hungary
- Ágnes KOVÁCS, independent researcher
Keywords
historical sociology, prosopography, family history, historical research, digital humanities
Outputs
Selected publications
Kovács, I. G., & Takács, Á., (2022). Az "összeilleszkedés" változatai. Az akkulturációtól az asszimilációig: a Dunamelléki és Dunántúli zsidó származású református egyetemi tanárok életrajzi adattára és életútleírása. Budapest, Magyarország: ELTE Eötvös Kiadó, Eötvös Loránd Tudományegyetem.
Kovács, I. G., & Takács, Á. (2018). A Magyar Tudományos Akadémia tagjai a két világháború közötti magyar tudáselitben I. A protestáns felekezeti-művelődési alakzatokhoz tartozók ősfái. Budapest: ELTE Eötvös Kiadó.
https://www.eltereader.hu/media/2019/10/Kovacs_MTA-VH_HAT_WEB.pdf
Kovács, I. G., & Takács, Á.. (2016). Sárospatak erőterében: A tiszáninneni származású református egyetemi tanárok életrajzi adattára és életútleírása. In Magyarországi egyetemi tanárok életrajzi adattára 1848-1944 (Vol. III). Budapest: ELTE Eötvös Kiadó.
Kovács, I. G., & Takács, Á. (2014). Hit - tudomány - közélet: A Debreceni Tudományegyetem Református Hittudományi Kara (1914-1950) professzorainak életrajzi adattára és életútleírása. In Magyarországi egyetemi tanárok életrajzi adattára 1848-1944 (Vol. II). Budapest: ELTE Eötvös Kiadó
https://mek.oszk.hu/14700/14774/14774.pdf
Kovács, I. G., Kiss, Zs., & Takács, Á. (2012). Diszkrimináció – emancipáció – asszimiláció – diszkrimináció. Magyarországi egyetemi tanárok életrajzi adattára I. : Zsidó és zsidó származású egyetemi tanárok. Történeti elitkutatások – Historical Elite Research. Budapest: ELTE Eötvös Kiadó, ELTE Társadalomtudományi Kar
https://mek.oszk.hu/12800/12884/12884.pdf
Latest conferences
Bartha, D. & Kiss, Zs. (2019, November 9.) #elitdata project – Adatbázis építés - használat - fenntartás a történeti tudományokban [Databases in the historical disciplines, online] (in Hungarian)
Kiss, Zs. (2022, October 5-7). A hazai tudáselit kutatások helye a nemzetközi és a magyar elitkutatási hagyományban [The Place of Hungarian Historical Elite Researches within the Tradition of International and Hungarian Elite Research Tradition], Klebersberg és kora tudományos konferencia, University of Pécs, Budapest, Hungary (https://mnl.gov.hu/mnl/baml/hirek/meghivo_a_klebelsberg_es_kora_c_tudomanyos_konferenciara_2022_oktober_5_7)
Contact information (leader)
Zsuzsanna KISS
associate professor
Department of Comparative Historical Sociology
Faculty of Social Sciences, Eötvös Loránd University of Budapest (ELTE)
zsuzsi.kiss@tatk.elte.hu