Alumni stories

During the winter of 2021 DSPS alumnus Miklós Zala (Political Theory track, 2017) caught up with fellow alumni to talk about their experience at CEU, their life after graduating, and their current work.

Renira Corinne Angeles
(Political Economy track, 2018) 

She is a joint postdoctoral fellow at Norwegian Research Centre (NORCE), Department of Social Sciences, and University of Bergen. She earned her PhD in Political Science at CEU, and a MSc in Political Economy at BI Norwegian Business School. 

 

Olga Löblová
(Public Policy track, 2016)

She is a postdoctoral research associate at the Department of Sociology, University of Cambridge. In 2019-2020, she held a Borysiewicz Biomedical Sciences Fellowship in parallel to her postdoc. In August 2020, she was awarded a Wellcome Trust Fellowship in Humanities and Social Science, which she will begin in 2021.

 

Greg Bognar
(Political Theory track, 2005)

He is Senior Lecturer in Practical Philosophy at Stockholm University and a Senior Researcher at the Stockholm Centre for Healthcare Ethics (CHE). His research is in normative and applied ethics, especially bioethics and PPE (politics, philosophy, and economics). He is co-author of the book The Ethics of Health Care Rationing: An Introduction (Routledge, 2014). In the 2019-2020 academic year, he was Laurance S. Rockefeller Visiting Faculty Fellow at the Center for Human Values at Princeton University.

Constantin M. Bosancianu
(Comparative Politics track, 2017)

He is a research fellow in the Institutions and Political Inequality research unit at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center. In his current work, he focuses on the macro-level drivers of political inequality between socio-economic groups, the linkages between political and economic inequality, as well as how to experimentally disentangle dimensions of political inequality. He is interested in causal identification, data visualization, and the history of Leftist parties.

Eldar Sarajlic
(Political Theory track, 2014)

He is a social and political philosopher. His research interest is in theories of personal identity, liberalism, parenthood ethics, autonomy and authenticity, and critical thinking and reasoning. His work appeared in Journal of Applied Philosophy, Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, American Journal of Bioethics, Res Publica, and others.

Mariana Budjeryn
(International Relations track, 2016)

She is a Research Associate with the Project of Managing the Atom (MTA) at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center. Formerly, she held appointments as a Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow at MTA, a fellow at Harvard Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, and as a visiting professor at Tufts University and Peace Research Institute Frankfurt. Mariana’s research straddles nuclear history and international politics with the focus on nuclear nonproliferation, arms control, Cold War, Soviet collapse and post-Soviet transitions. Her forthcoming book Inheriting the Bomb: Soviet Collapse and Ukraine’s Nuclear Disarmament examines the history and politics of post-Soviet nuclear renunciation. Mariana’s analytical contributions have appeared in The Nonproliferation Review, Harvard International Review, World Affairs Journal, Arms Control Today, The Washington Post, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, War on the Rocks, and in the publications of the Wilson International Center for Scholars where she is a Global Fellow.

SzaboImre Szabó
(Political Economy track, 2016)

He is a post-doctoral research fellow within the ERC project 'Labour Politics and the EU's New Economic Governance Regime' at the College of Business and the Geary Institute for Public Policy at University College Dublin. His main research interest is the politics of labour and public service provision, with a focus on healthcare, education and the water sector.

Agatha Siwale
(Public Policy track, 2018)

She is currently a lecturer in the Public Administration and Policy Group at Wageningen University and Research (WUR). Her research interests are in natural resource governance, development policy and institutional dynamics. She specifically analyses how formal and informal institutions interact to shape outcomes for small-scale miners and has published papers on the limits of formalisation in small-scale mining and the dynamics of collective action in these contexts.

Silvia Fierăscu
(Comparative Politics track, 2017)

She works at the intersection of academia, business, government and civil society, applying Network and Data Science to inform decision-making in anticorruption, organizational design, change management, mobilization, and innovation. She is currently a Lecturer in Communication Science and Research Fellow in Big Data Science at West University of Timisoara, where she teaches and researches digital platforms, analysis of (large) digital data, and data driven, evidence-based policy-making processes. She is also Head of OrgMapper Academy, the professional knowledge hub and training center in Organizational Network Analysis at Maven7 Network Research Inc. Hungary, where she trains and consults global Human Resources, Organizational Development and Change Management executives, consultants, and researchers to improve their organizational cultures, trust networks, communication flows and leadership capabilities. Dr. Fierascu founded and leads the Social Fabrics Research Lab at West University of Timisoara, a research, development and innovation lab in computational social sciences, and an experiential and experimental learning hub for students.

Sasikumar S. Sundaram
(International Relations track, 2017)

He is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the School of International Service at American University, Washington D.C. and a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Department of Political Science, University of São Paulo, Brasil. His research focuses on Global Order and Global South; liberalism and empire; foreign and security policies of India, Brazil, and China in a comparative perspective; and status and reputational concerns of states. His articles have appeared in journals such as International Theory, International Studies Quarterly, Journal of Global Strategic Studies, Journal of International Political Theory, Polity among others.