Return to Central Europe. Grand Voyage with Music, Politics and Social Sciences

With extraordinary empathy and an intuitive understanding drawn from her own experiences, Jody Jensen has facilitated the integration of a diverse group of international researchers, scholars, and students working and studying in Kőszeg. Her presence and mediation have made her, to borrow a Hungarian term, the ‘sourdough’ of this unique academic community into which iASK has blossomed over the past decade.

 

Jody Jensen (Hungary–USA) is the Director of Transdisciplinary Research and Collaboration, and the Polányi Centre at the Institute of Advanced Studies Kőszeg (iASK). She is a senior research fellow at the Institute of Political Sciences at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, which is now at Eötvös Loránd University. Between 2011–2023 she was the director of the International Studies MA Program at the Corvinus University of Budapest Kőszeg Campus, and later at the University of Pannonia Kőszeg Campus, where she was awarded a Jean Monnet Chair for European Solidarity and Social Cohesion. She is director of international relations at the Institute of Social and European Studies (a Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence) which she helped to found. Between 1994–2003 she was the national and regional director of Ashoka: Innovators for the Public that supports social entrepreneurs. She frequently works for the European Commission. Her areas of research and publication are new social and political movements, particularly in East and Central Europe and the Balkans; looking at the conjunction of the social and natural sciences in the study of complexity as it translates to social phenomenon and change. She is also interested in the transformation of education and the social sciences in response to global challenges.

 

As Jody Jensen reaches the milestone of her 70th birthday, it’s the perfect moment to reflect on the remarkable and far-reaching impact she has had on scholarship, social change, and the countless individuals whose lives she has touched. Jody’s journey has been one of unwavering intellectual passion and deep ethical engagement – qualities that have shaped not only academic discourse but also the very heart of European civil society.

Delfin Pllana

 

Jody has always cherished her early expeperiences in the former Yugoslavia. For over thirty years, she has dedicated her research and writing to the Balkans. She invited people from the entire region to the Summer University, even during the height of the war that was ravaging the country. She created a space for debate and reconciliation, encouraging participants to believe that their dream of joining the European family was attainable. Though the past three decades have taught us that the inhabitants of the Balkans need more than just shared dreams, and that Europe has missed the opportunity to learn from Yugoslavia’s violent disintegration, Jody Jensen remains one of those rare individuals who have never lost the courage to be both a researcher and an activist, advocating for a European Balkans.

Sonja Licht

Szerző:

Kovács Ágnes, Pók Attila, Stepanović, Ivana (szerk.)

Megjelenés dátuma:

2025. 12. 26.

Információk:

364 oldal, kartonált, 168 x 238 mm

ISBN:

978 963 556 673 0