Hegedűs István

István Hegedűs (1957) is the chairman of the Hungarian Europe Society, a Budapest-based NGO. Since the turn of the century, HES has organised numerous conferences and workshops on current international affairs, focusing especially on European Union issues.

Hegedűs has become politically active at the very beginning of the Hungarian regime-change. In 1989 he participated at the national roundtable negotiations on the transition to democracy as a delegate of the opposition groups. He was a permanent member of the media committee during the talks. He became a liberal member of the first free elected Hungarian Parliament in 1990 and also served as the vice-chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee.

Following this period, Hegedűs worked as a free-lanced scholar and lecturer in several higher education institutions. Amongst others, he had courses on Hungarian and European politics for students participating at the Education Abroad Program of the University of California located at the Eötvös Loránd University of Sciences in Budapest.

He received his Ph. D. in sociology at Corvinus University of Budapest in 2004.

Since 2011 Hegedűs lives partly in Brussels, partly in Budapest as a free-lancer.

His publications include:

• an edited volume in English entitled “Media and Politics” (co-edited with Péter Bajomi-Lázár, New Mandate Publishing House, Budapest, 2001)
• an edited book in Hungarian “The Marching In of the Hungarians - As a Member State in the Enlarging European Union” (Hungarian Centre for Democracy Studies Foundation, Budapest, 2006)
• political analyses like the publication in English entitled “After the Accession Talks, Facing the Referendum - Hungary and its Media Joining the EU” (Central European Political Science Review, Spring 2003)
• a study entitled Media Representations of EU Matters in National Media Systems - The Hungarian Case (in: Media, Nationalism and European Identities, edited by Miklós Sükösd and Karol Jakubowicz, Central European University Press, Budapest - New York, 2011)
• On Politics and Migration:
• Orbán’s Victory or the Endgame of His Regime? Blog der Forschungsgruppe Osteuropa am Institut für Politikwissenschaft der Universität Wien, 13 October 2016
• (as a member of a research group): The Refugee Crisis and the Reactions of the Visegrad Countries. Final Report, Hungarian Europe Society, September 2016