Postdoctoral awards with New Europe College Winners

Winner 2025-2026

Vojtech POJAR

Vojtech POJAR

  • Independent Scholar
  • Field of Study: Comparative History of Political Thinking
  • Mattei Dogan Fellow at the New Europe College
  • Country: Czech Republic

Research project: The Languages of Race in State-Socialist East Central Europe, 1945-1989

Resonating with the recent resurgence of interest in historicizing the construction and political uses of the concept of race in East Central Europe, my postdoctoral project examines its role in state-socialist regimes. Through a comparative analysis of Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland, it reveals the enduring – though not central – position of this concept in their political and expert cultures, and identifies at least three distinct “languages of race” within these dictatorships.

Winner 2024-2025

Wiktor Marzec (Poland)

Wiktor MARZEC

  • Academic Year: 2024 / 2025
  • Field of Study: Political Science
  • Research Program: Mattei Dogan
  • Affiliation: Institute for Social Studies, University of Warsaw
  • Position: Project Leader
  • Country: Poland
  • Link to the New Europe College

Research project: Patchwork Parliaments. Post-imperial Field of Power in the Second Republic of Poland and Greater Romania After the First World War.

This project studies representative assemblies in post-imperial states after 1918 to understand the morphing field of power characterised by high cultural diversity, shifts in ethnic hierarchies, crippling regionalisms, and nationalising integration. These chambers were arenas where various elites debated the polity and traded their diverse resources. Comparing two patchwork parliaments staged as national assemblies, the project zooms in on transitory biographies and capitals of their members.

Winners 2023-2024

Szabolcs LÁSZLÓ

  • Academic Year: 2023 / 2024
  • Field of Study: History
  • Research Program: Mattei Dogan
  • Affiliation: Institute of History, Research Centre for the Humanities, Budapest
  • Position: Research Fellow
  • Country: Hungary
  • Link to the New Europe College
Research project: Transcending the Cold War: Transnational Mediators, Professional Communities, and Hungarian-American Exchanges (1960s-1970s)

As a New Europe College Fellow, I will work on my book project that aims to reimagine the Cold War as an era of transnational exchange. I explore scholarly and artistic interactions between Hungary and the U.S. during the 1960s-70s, from scholarship programs to international conferences to literary residencies. I show that these collaborations were made possible by transnational mediators from both East and West, who ushered in processes of inter-reliant modernization on both “sides.”

Markenc LORENCI

  • Academic Year: 2023 / 2024
  • Field of Study: History
  • Research Program: Mattei Dogan
  • Affiliation: Roma Tre University
  • Position: Teaching Assistant
  • Country: Albania
  • Link to the New Europe College
Research project: From Illegal to Rulers: The Albanian Communist Party from its Foundation to the Seizure of Power (1941-1944)

This project aims to trace a social and political history of the Albanian Communist Party [Partia Komuniste Shqiptare – PKSh], in a period of time ranging from its foundation on 8 November 1941, until the seizure of power on 28 November 1944. Adopting an interdisciplinary and comparative approach, a deconstruction of the PKSh in the indicated period will be carried out, analyzing at the same time the partisan resistance led by it.