Congratulations to Dr. Bálint Varga

Bálint Varga’s book The Monumental Nation: Magyar Nationalism and Symbolic Politics in Fin-de-siècle Hungary was awarded the Richard G. Plaschka Award of the Austrian Academy of Sciences for Outstanding Scientific Work in “Eastern European, East-Middle European or Southeastern European History. 

Bálint Varga received his PhD in history in 2013 from Loránd-Eötvös-University Budapest and Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz. Since 2013, Varga has been a researcher at the Institute of History of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Published by Berghahn Books in 2016 as part of its series on Austrian and Habsburg Studies, The Monumental Nation analyzes the function of state monuments policy and focuses in particular on seven highly controversial monumental memorials erected in 1896 to commemorate the millennium of the Magyar conquest of the area that later became Hungary. Varga’s rigorously researched study enriches the social history of nationalism in Hungary in the late nineteenth century and provides new insights into the complex relationship between local and national memories.

Conferred in Vienna on November 15th, 2018, the award is named after the Austrian historian Richard Georg Plaschka, who devoted his life to the history of Central and Eastern Europe and is a leader in Habsburg research. In his honor, young scholars have been awarded this prize every two years since 2004.

Congratulations to Bálint Varga on this well-deserved recognition!