Research and projects

Financial crisis, immigration crisis, Covid-19. How can societies govern themselves, deliver stable public services and protect democracy amidst constant turbulence? The Robust Project, funded by the EU Horizon Europe Programme seeks answers to these questions, focusing on ”robust governance.” During the project, the Department of Public Policy at Corvinus University collaborates with nine European universities to study the responses of EU institutions and eight European countries to three recent crises to understand general patterns in system-level crises response. The project has launched on October 1, 2022 and runs for 36 months. 

For more information, please click here. 

OTKA Research K-131733  

The aim of this project, funded by the National, Research, Development and Innovation Office, is to investigate visions of artificial intelligence. It is essential to investigate how these expectations  shape the future and the present. Ideas about artificial intelligence are present at many levels of society, and we therefore consider it important to study the topic sociologically. In order to achieve our research objectives, we use both the traditional sociological interview method and specific futures research tools. 

Rather than focusing social discourse on what the impact of technology will be, and seeing technological development as a kind of inevitable phenomenon outside of society that cannot be controlled, we believe it is important to address questions such as: how can technological development help to create a desirable future state? What does a desirable future state even look like? Who could and should have a say in the development of artificial intelligence and how? 

The research project included interviews, scenario building and backcasting with AI experts from academia, business and the civil sector.  We wanted to know what possible future scenarios these experts envision for the development of AI and what their preferred vision of the future is. 

Below is a link to a few minutes of video as part of the Fair Work Future Emerald campaign, in which the head of the research explains some of the project’s main ideas:  

Head of Research: Dr. Lilla Mária Vicsek (Associate Professor, Department of Sociology   

Research participants: Dr. Alexandra Köves, Dr. Katalin Fehér, Ágnes Horváth, Dr. Tamás Tóth, Dr. Boglárka Herke, Dr. Tamás Bokor, Dr. Gyöngyvér Pataki, Dr. Roland Keszi, interns 

Main publications of the project so far:  

Vicsek, L. (2021). Artificial intelligence and the future of work – lessons from the sociology of expectations, International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, Vol. 41 No. 7/8, pp. 842-861. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJSSP-05-2020-0174 

Vicsek, L., Bokor, T. and Pataki, Gy. (2022). Younger generations’ expectations regarding artificial intelligence in the job market: Mapping accounts about the future relationship of automation and work, Journal of Sociology, OnlineFirst, 29 March, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/14407833221089365 

Herke, B., Vicsek, L. (2022). The attitudes of young citizens in higher education towards universal basic income in the context of automation – A qualitative study.  International Journal of Social Welfare, 1– 13. https://doi.org/10.1111/ijsw.12533  

Vicsek, L., Tóth, T. (2022). Visions of human-centered artificial intelligence – Relations with ethics and power. In: Michael Filimowicz (Ed.) Algorithmic Ethics, Routledge. Accepted, in print. 

Public Administration Education Quality Enhancement Erasmus+ Strategic Partnership KA203 No – 2018-1-SK01-KA203-046330 

The Project is running at the Department of Public Policy under the professional management of György Hajnal in the field of surveying the programmes providing university degree in public administration in the member states of the European Union. 

The EAPPA accreditation of the Public Policy and Management MSc (both the Hungarian and English language programmes) was performed in connection with the project.  

For more information, please visit https://www.nispa.org/paquality.php?proj_id=16&sid=1887  

Project leader / Principal investigator: György Hajnal, Éva Kovács 

Staff: Iga Jeziorska, Nándor Petrovics 

IFEMPOWER – Interactive and mentorship based FEMale emPOWERment in the field of entrepreneurship 

Erasmus+ Project (2017-2021), professionally managed by Attila Bartha, associate professor of the Department of Public Policy and Management. The project focuses on the development of curriculum harnessing – mainly female – students studying for launching businesses with techniques, which previously restricted their rational risk assumption, the fulfilment of their innovative ideas. 

 
Objectives fulfilled in the course of the project:  

For more information about IFEMPOWER please visit https://ifempower.eu/intellectual-outputs/ 

The Department has launched the Series “Top Scholars” in 2017. Every year more international top scholars visit us to hold open lectures and seminars to the Students of Public Policy and Management.

Upcoming dates of Top Scholars Series:

December 2022: Prof. Dr. Stephen P. Osborne

Professor Osborne is the Chair of International Public Management and Director of Centre for Service Excellence at the University of Edinburgh Business School. He is also the Co-Director of the European Union’s „Learning from Innovation in Public Sector Environments” (LIPSE) Programme. He is a world-leading scholar in public service innovation and New Public Governance.

March 2023: Prof. Dr. Geert Bouckaert

Prof. Dr. Geert Bouckaert is the President of the International Institute of Administrative Sciences (IIAS), professor is one of the most distinguished scholar and a key researcher of comparative public management as well as performance management studies. He authored several ones of the most-cited academic contributions of the field. He specializes in performance management in the government, financial management, comparative public management and policy design and strategy.

The Cor-vi-nus Philosophy Workshop, established in 2021, aims to provide a framework for both high quality philosophical research and education. 

From the point of view of philosophical research, the workshop provides a forum for its members to discuss their current research problems and results and to brainstorm philosophically. In this context, it is primarily intended to be a forum for the discussion of the recent work and philosophical ideas of workshop members. The result of this activity will be a convergence of thematic and argumentative perspectives that may open up prospects for joint research in the long term. 

From the point of view of philosophical education, the members of the workshop actively seek to involve students, partly with a view to developing their general philosophical intelligence and partly with a view to producing results, such as for example, high quality TDK papers. 

Events: 

– 15 December 2021 (lecture). Kiss Olga: „Polányi, Schön és a gyakorlati tudás episztemológiája” 

– 3 December 2021 (conference). Vallás és pandémia (With Magyar Vallástudományi Társaság  https://docs.google.com/document/d/170jZLFk8v6gQay2s36IeyIWiJTft4QMe/edit ). 

– 26 November 2021 (conference):  Symposium of the Hungarian Philosophical Encyclopaedia. A Magyar Filozófiai Enciklopédia szimpóziuma https://magyarfilozofiaienciklopedia.hu/hirek/   

– 27 October 2021 (lecture). Hoppál Bulcsú: „Pauler Ákos szellemtörténeti kategóriái” 

– 24 September 2021 (conference): Molnár Tamás és az angolszász konzervativizmus https://www.scribd.com/document/527997827/Molna-r-konferencia-plaka-t-2021-09-24 

– 26 May 2021 (lecture). Demeter, Tamás: „Sympathies for Common Ends: The Principles of Organization in Hume’s Psychology and Political Economy” https://www.researchgate.net/publication/351658514_Sympathies_for_Common_Ends_The_Principles_of_Organization_in_Hume’s_Psychology_and_Political_Economy 

– 12 May 2021 (lecture): Toronyai, Gábor: „A halál fenomenológiai megközelítése Husserlt követve” https://filozofiaiszemle.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Toronyai-G%C3%A1bor-A-hal%C3%A1l-fenomenol%C3%B3giai-megk%C3%B6zel%C3%ADt%C3%A9se-%E2%80%93-Husserlt-k%C3%B6vetve.pdf  

Researchers: 

Demeter, Tamás 

Hoppál, Bulcsú Kál 

Mezei, Balázs Mihály 

Kiss, Olga 

Toronyai, Gábor 

Lánczi, András 

On 1 July 2019, the Social Epidemiology Research Group of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences – Corvinus University of Budapest was established under the leadership of Zsuzsa Elekes. The aim of the Research Group is – in the tradition of Rudolf Andorka – to conduct studies that contribute to the exploration and understanding of the social patterns, characteristics, causes and correlations of addictive health behaviours. 

The Research Group’s own website: devianciakutas.hu