Ágnes holds a Ph.D. in Comparative History (2019) from Central European University, with a focus on Jewish Studies. Her main research interests are East Central Europe, migration and Jewish history. After her Ph.D. she worked as a research fellow at the Masaryk Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences in an EU-funded project on the history of refugees in 20th century East Central Europe. She joined the CEU Democracy Institute’s Democracy in History workgroup in 2022 from where she went on maternity leave in 2024. She has published numerous peer reviewed academic articles and book chapters in Hungary, Italy and the Czech Republic, while also working on the public dissemination of historical knowledge.
/Profile photo credits: Róbert Fonó /
Project title: Hungarian Students in Exile: Jews, Left-Wingers, Women (1920–1938)
Ágnes is currently finishing her book on interwar Hungarian university students abroad. Five to ten thousand Hungarian Jews studied at foreign universities as a consequence of the Jewish quota set up by the infamous numerus clausus law of 1920. Ágnes argues in the book that while the numerus clausus was an antisemitic law, the marginalization of Jews was not its only function and therefore examines the emigration of left-winger and women students too.
Relevant links:
Profile on the CEU-DI website: https://democracyinstitute.ceu.edu/people/agnes-kelemen
Academia.edu profile: https://ceu.academia.edu/%C3%81gnesKelemen
LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/agnes-kelemen-90a86328/