According to the decision of the Governing Body of the Eötvös Loránd Research Network and with the approval of its president Miklós Maróth two new institutes of the Research Centre for the Humanities were established on March 3, 2021. The Institute of Archaeogenomics researches the genomic relationships of the region’s and other archaic and contemporary populations of Eurasia, and the Gyula Moravcsik Institute coordinates research based on the methodology of classical philology.
Balázs Balogh, the Director of the Institute of Ethnography was elected Director General of the Research Center for the Humanities for five years at the last meeting of the Governing Body of the Eötvös Loránd Research Network, since the mandate of Pál Fodor as Director General ended on 28 February 2021.
Pope Francis has appointed Hungarian historian Antal Molnár to head of the Pontifical Committee for Historical Sciences for five years, the Hungarian Catholic Bishops’ Conference.
Antal Molnár has been director of the Institute of History of the Research Centre for the Humanities since 2019. The papal committee established in 1954 cooperates with ecclesiastical and non-religious bodies and institutions, focusing on ecumenical dialogue. Molnár is an expert on the early history of the Catholic Church with a focus on relations between Hungary and the Holy See, as well as the history of Hungary and the Balkans in the 16th-17th centuries.
The Kingdom of Hungary in the Árpád era does not take its place in the historical memory as it should deserve. Yet a deeper knowledge of this bright period in the Hungarian history could be an important element of a modern European and Hungarian identity. The Hungarian government wished to facilitate this by adopting the regulation 1832/2013. (XI. 15.) on the Árpád Dynasty Program and related development sub-programs (2013–2038). An Operational Board was set up to elaborate the project, led by Director General of the Research Centre for the Humanities, Pál Fodor. The Board, with the involvement of the leading researchers of the period, developed the Árpád Dynasty Program within a few months, the implementation of which started in 2018.
The program focuses on the preservation, presentation and development of the national memorial site in Székesfehérvár, but it also provides intense support for historical, philological, archaeological, archaeogenetic, etc. research, which enables a more thorough knowledge and presentation of the Árpáds – and the Árpád era in a broader sense. To communicate the results to an international audience, a new English-language series entitled Arpadiana was launched last year by the Research Centre for the Humanities (editors: Pál Fodor and Attila Zsoldos). This article presents the first four volumes published so far.
An English-language volume on the history of the Szapolyai family was published as the latest product of the “Mohács 1526–2026 - Reconstruction and Remembrance” project, which took place between 2017–2020 in collaboration with the Research Center for the Humanities and the University of Pécs. The volume of sixteen studies entitled A Forgotten Hungarian Royal Dynasty: The Szapolyais was edited by Pál Fodor and Szabolcs Varga.