PD Dr Borbala Zsuzsanna Török

Senior Research Fellow

Käte Hamburger Kolleg / Centre for Global Cooperation Research
Schifferstraße 44
47059 Duisburg
Deutschland

Phone: +49 (0)203 379-5230
Fax: +49 (0)203 379-5276
E-Mail: toeroek@gcr21.uni-due.de

Vita

09/2019 – 02/2021	University of Vienna Department of History, Faculty of Historical and Cultural Studies PostDoc
07/2017 – 06/2019	University of Vienna Institute of Austrian Historical Research Lise Meitner Fellow
06/2009 – 12/2014	University of Konstanz Zukunftskolleg Research Fellow
01/2007 – 04/2009	Central European University, Budapest Pasts, Inc. Center for Historical Studies Research Coordinator
09/2004 – 04/2009	Central European University, Budapest Pasts, Inc. Center for Historical Studies Assistant to the Director

Membership

Herder Institute Research Academy, successor to Leibniz Graduate School, Herder-Institute, Marburg, Germany
European Network in Universal and Global History (ENIUGH)
Verband der Osteuropahistorikerinnen und -historiker e.V. (VOH)
European Society for Environmental History
Hungarian Studies Association, an affiliate of the American Historical Association and the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (Book/Article Prize Committee Member)

Fellowship

PD Dr Borbala Zsuzsanna Török joined the research group 'Legitimation and Delegitimation in Global Cooperation' in March 2021 and will be a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre until February 2022.

Research Project at the Centre

Critique of the Liberal State, Private Property and Legal Reform: Late 19th Century Experiences and Their Legacies

The project analyzes the critique of the liberal legislation of land property at the end of the nineteenth century in a comparative and transnational perspective. Taking as its starting point fin-de-siècle Habsburg Monarchy, it aims to identify the actors involved, as well as the shape and historical dynamics of the legislative-intellectual field in which the criticism was voiced and political solutions articulated. It does so by asking about learning processes and trans-national cooperations across the globe in addressing the fragility of property relations in traditional societies in face of their capitalist transformation. During my stay at the Centre I will focus on the oeuvre of the legal scholar and later rector of the University of Czernowitz, Eugen Ehrlich (1862-1922), in comparison to the activity of the legal scholar in post-Mutiny British India, Henry Sumner Maine (1822-1888), asking about intellectual interferences and cross-cultural learning processes of legal scholars and legislators in a global context, while also exploring their legacies in the twentieth century.

Research Interests

History of the Habsburg Monarchy in a global context
The sciences of the state and statistics
Circulation and practices of knowledge
Nationalism and entangled histories in (East-) Central Europe, 19–20^th centuries

Publications

Török, Zsuzsana B. (2021). Staatenkunde and State Building in the Habsburg Monarchy, ca. 1790–1880. Habilitation Manuscript, defended at the University of Vienna, 17.02.
Török, Zsuzsana B. (2020). “Exploring the k.u.k. Province – Landeskunde and honismeret in nineteenth-century Transylvania,” in Jan Arend (ed.), Science and Empire in Eastern Europe. Imperial Russia and the Habsburg Monarchy in the 19th Century (Bad Wiesseer Tagungen des Collegium Carolinum, 38), Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 187–203.
Török, Zsuzsana B. (2015). “Memory, History, Forgetting, and the Chances of an Interdisciplinary Dialogue on Human Consciousness”, in Giovanni Galizia and David Schulmann (eds.), Forgetting: An Interdisciplinary Conversation, Jerusalem: Hebrew University Magnes Press, 314–322.
Török, Zsuzsana B. (2015). Exploring Transylvania. Geographies of Knowledge and Entangled Histories of a Multiethnic Province, 1790–1914. National Cultivations of Culture, Leiden: Brill Publishers.
Török, Zsuzsana B. with Gunhild Berg and Marcus Twellmann (eds.) (2015). Berechnen/Beschreiben. Praktiken statistischen (Nicht-)Wissens 1750–1850, Berlin: Duncker & Humblot.
Török, Zsuzsana B. with László Kontler, Antonella Romano and Silvia Sebastiani (eds.) (2014). Negotiating Knowledge in Early-Modern Empires: a Decentered View. Studies in Cultural and Intellectual History, New York: Palgrave Publishers.
Török, Zsuzsana B. with Dietmar Müller and Balázs Trencsényi (2009). Reframing the European Pasts: National Discourses and Regional Comparisons, East Central Europe (special issue) 36: 1–2.
Török, Zsuzsana B. with John Neubauer (eds.) (2009). The Exile and Return of Writers from East-Central Europe, Berlin: De Gruyter.
Török, Zsuzsana B. with Viktor Karády (eds.) (2008). Cultural Dimensions of Elite Formation in Modern Transylvania (1770–1950), Cluj: Ethnocultural Diversity Resource Centre.