I was born in 1955 in Budapest (Hungary). I have graduated at the Eötvös Loránd University of Budapest in 1978; I have received a university degree of Historical Sciences and of Russian Language, Literature, and Slavistic. I wrote my B.Sc. thesis on Russian historiography, more exactly on the works of M.N. Pokrovsky. Finally, I have received my university doctor’s diploma (roughly equivalent to a M.Sc.) at the Eötvös Loránd University in 1983.
I began to work in 1979 at the Institute of Historical Sciences of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, where I stayed until 1986. During this period, apart from my own research activities, I was also in charge, as editorial secretary, of a quarterly survey of the Institute (called Világtörténet, i.e., Universal History). I have personally collected some of the original materials for my M.Sc. at the Archives of the Ministry of External Affairs in Paris. The essence of my work was the topic of my first publication. I published several papers in that period, primarily in Hungarian periodicals. I also spend some times in Paris with a scholarship at the “École des Hautes Etudes des Sciences Sociales”.
I left Hungary in 1986 due to family reasons; I was therefore forced to give up my position at the Institute. I spent three years in Munich (Germany), where I could build closer contacts with the Südost-Institut (a Bavarian research institution concentrating on the history of Eastern and South-Eastern Europe). I have published some papers in the official journal of the Südost-Institut called “Südost-Forschungen”, and I also reviewed a number of books.
I moved to the Netherlands at the end of 1988. Since then, I have been continuing my individual research activities as independent researcher publishing books, articles in specialized reviews, lecturing at universities as invited lecturer.
I have received my Ph.D. degree from the Eötvös Loránd University of Budapest in 1997. This degree was awarded on the basis of my original M.Sc. thesis, and my research results published in many articles that I could produce afterwards.
In 1996 I began to work more closely with the European Studies Programme of the Centre of European Studies at the Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, within the framework of the PHARE programme by the European Union. I acted as an invited lecturer at the University every year between 1998 and 2001. In 2002 I was invited lecturer in the Institute of Political Sciences of the Faculty of Law of the Eötvös Loránd University of Budapest. I taught there the history of the idea of European unity and the history of European integration.
I published a book on the history of the idea of European unity from the 14th century until the establishment of the European Economic Community. In the past few years I have also published several papers on the history of federalism, of international law, of human rights and of self-determination in Central Europe in the 19th and the 20th centuries, and on the history of the European integration in the period between 1945 and 2003. I have also written two manuscripts for books that await publication: one on the history of the European Idea in Central Europe, 1849-1945, and another on the history of the European integration theories in historical perspective.
As invited lecturer, I currently teach the history of the theory and practice of European integration at the Department of International Relations of the Corvinus University of Budapest in the framework of an international course in English.
In 2006 I taught, also as an invited lecturer, the history of the construction of Europe and the federalist idea at the Department of International Relations of the Eötvös Loránd University of Budapest.
I was awarded the degree of Doctor Habilitata (Dr. Habil.) by the University of Pécs in 2007.