Balazs Trencsenyi is Professor in the Department of History, Central European University Budapest. His research focuses on the comparative history of political thought in East Central Europe and the history of historiography. He is Co-Director of Pasts, Inc., Center for Historical Studies at CEU and Editor of the periodical East Central Europe (Brill). His publications include A History of Modern Political Thought in East Central Europe: Volume I: Negotiating Modernity in the 'Long Nineteenth Century' (with Maciej Janowski, Monika Baar, Maria Falina, and Michal Kopecek, OUP, 2016), The Politics of 'National Character': A Study in Interwar East European Thought (Routledge, 2012), Whose Love of Which Country?: Composite States, National Histories and Patriotic Discourses in Early Modern East Central Europe (Brill, 2010), and Hungary and Romania beyond National Narratives: Comparisons and Entanglements (Peter Lang, 2013).



Michal Kopecek is Head of the Ideas and Concepts Department at the Institute of Contemporary History in Prague, and Co-Director of Imre Kertesz Kolleg, Friedrich Schiller University in Jena. His publications include A History of Modern Political Thought in East Central Europe: Volume I: Negotiating Modernity in the 'Long Nineteenth Century' (with Balazs Trencsenyi, Maciej Janowski, Monika Baar, Maria Falina, OUP, 2016), and Quest for the Revolution's Lost Meaning: Origins of the Marxist Revisionism in Central Europe, 1953-1960 (forthcoming Brill, 2018).


Luka Lisjak Gabrijelcic is a PhD candidate at the program in Comparative History of Central, Southeastern and Eastern Europe at the Central European University, Budapest. His main fields of interest include intellectual history, nationalism, and history of political thought, with a focus on European peripheries and semi-peripheries. He co-authored a volume on modern radical ideologies ( Utopije demokracije, ZNK Masovna, 2005), and edited a volume on humanism in contemporary social and political thought ( Blodnjaki smisla: misliti humanizem danes, DHG, 2007). He is the editor of the Slovenian quarterly journal Razpotja.


Maria Falina is Lecturer in Modern European History at Dublin City University. Her main fields of interest are intellectual history, nationalism, and history of religion and politics. Her publications include A History of Modern Political Thought in East Central Europe: Volume I: Negotiating Modernity in the 'Long Nineteenth Century' (with Balazs Trencsenyi, Michal Kopecek, Maciej Janowski, and Monika Baar, OUP, 2016), and articles such as 'Between "Clerical Fascism" and Political Orthodoxy: Orthodox Christianity and Nationalism in Interwar Serbia' in Totalitarian Movements & Political Religions, (2007) 8/2: 247-258, and 'Religion Visible and Invisible: The Case of Post-Yugoslav Anti-War Films', in C. Schmitt and L. Berezhnaya, eds. Iconic Turn(s): Religion and Nation in East European Films after 1989 (Brill, 2013).

Monika Baar is Professor of Central European Studies at the University of Leiden. Her research focuses on modern historiography, cultural history and political thought, with special attention to the problem of marginality. Her publications include A History of Modern Political Thought in East Central Europe: Volume I: Negotiating Modernity in the 'Long Nineteenth Century' (with Balazs Trencsenyi, Michal Kopecek, Maciej Janowski, and Maria Falina, OUP, 2016), and Historians and the Nationalism: East-Central Europe in the Nineteenth Century (OUP, 2010). She is Associate Editor of Nationalities Papers.

Maciej Janowski is Head of Section at the Institute of History, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw and Visiting Professor at the Central European University, Budapest. His main fields of interest are social and intellectual history of Central Europe and the history of liberalism. He is editor of the periodical East Central Europe (Brill) and Deputy Editor of Kwartalnik Historyczny. His publications include A History of Modern Political Thought in East Central Europe: Volume I: Negotiating Modernity in the 'Long Nineteenth Century' (with Balazs Trencsenyi, Michal Kopecek, Monika Baar, and Maria Falina, OUP, 2016), and Polish Liberal Thought before 1918 (CEU Press, 2004).

"[the reader] will receive something like a universal formula encompassing the history of the region's political thought from the eighteenth century until the present ... The merit of this book is that it has introduced -- hopefully for good -- a whole series of previously-missing links into international academic discourse ... it is really worthwhile to read this weighty work." -- Maciej Górny, Acta Poloniae Historica

"The History of Modern Political Thought in East Central Europe is a brilliant book. It combines the intellectual history of Central East Europe with the region's political, sociological, and legal past for the first time. It is based on a very deep knowledge of the individual development of the various nations of East Central Europe and brings them together in a new, original, and innovative synthesis." - Martin Schulze Wessel, Professor of Eastern European History, Ludwig-Maximilian University, Munich

"The authors give us a work of reflection and learning that readers will turn to for generations; they not only recover the political thought of dozens of important writers across East Central Europe, but also uncover a lost map of hopes and insights, showing paths taken and not taken, right, left, and center, all of relevance to a region that continues to seek orientation. The authors come from many countries, but their voice is unified, and prose a pleasure to read, wherever one dips in, remarkably balanced throughout, leaning only in the direction of resolute, disinterested scholarship." - John Connelly, Professor of History, University of California Berkeley

"An ambitious collective endeavor by leading scholars of the post-1989 generation to revisit the key issues and rediscover the leading figures shaping the main currents of political thought in twentieth-century East-Central Europe. Its major contribution lies precisely in the transnational approach to the subject, providing a complex historical narrative and original insights into the political cultures of the region and their lasting relevance. Required reading for those who want to understand the intellectual background to the main political trends coming from East Central Europe today." - Jacques Rupnik, Director of Research, Sciences Po, Paris