Nationality Hungarian Children Benedek Website www.franktibor.hu | Spouse(s) Zsuzsa F. Várkonyi Awards Humboldt Prize Award Humboldt Prize | |
 | ||
Occupation Historian, Professor of History People also search for Frank Hadler, John Flournoy Montgomery, István Gáll Books Double Exile: Migration, Picturing Austria‑Hungary, Ethnicity - Propaganda - Myth‑Making, From Habsburg agent to, Genius in exile | ||
Tibor Frank (born 3 February 1948) is Hungarian historian, a professor of history at the Department of American Studies, Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE). He was director of its School of English and American Studies (1994—2001, 2006—2014). He is a corresponding member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (MTA).
Contents
Biography
Frank was born in 1948 in Budapest, Hungary. He graduated from Eötvös Loránd University in 1971 with an M.A. in History and English, obtaining his Dr. Univ. in Modern History there (1973). He received his Ph.D. in History at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (1979), his Habilitation in History at ELTE in 1996, and his D.Litt. at the HAS in 1998. He also attended Cambridge University, England (Christ’s College in 1969, Darwin College in 1980—81).
Academic career
He started his career at ELTE in the Department of Modern History (1971–73) and continued at the Department of English Studies (1973–90), where he taught British history. He was one of the founding members of the Department of American Studies in ELTE in 1990 and chair from 1992 to 1994. In Spring 2000 he set up the Ph.D. program in American Studies at ELTE and he has been its program director ever since.
His areas of research are the period from 1848-1945; with respect to international migrations; international images, stereotypes, and propaganda; transatlantic relations; historiography; music and politics.
Frank founded Hungary’s Modern Filológiai Társaság of Hungarian Academy of Sciences [Modern Language Association of HAS] in 1983, and served the Association as Secretary General from 1983 to 1996 and as Vice President between 1996 and 2007. He has been on the board of Historical Abstracts (Santa Barbara—Oxford, 1989—93, 2000—2008), Nationalities Papers (New York, 1989—2009), Polanyiana (Budapest, 1994—), the European Journal of American Culture (Nottingham, England, 1998—) and Külügyi Szemle (and Foreign Policy Review, 2011—).
He was co-president (1994—2001), and has become honorary president (2004—), of the Hungarian Association of American Studies and was a board member of the European Association for American Studies (EAAS, 1994—2001). He has been a member of the Board of the U.S.─Hungarian Fulbright Commission between 1999—2002, 2009—2011, 2013—); in 2010-2011 he was, and as of 2015 he is again, Chairman of the U.S.—Hungarian Fulbright Board. Between 2007 and 2015 he was Vice President of Magyar Történelmi Társulat [Hungarian Historical Association], in 2015 he was elected Chairman of the Editorial Board of its journal Századok
Visiting professorships and research grants
Between 1988 and 1990 Tibor was a Fulbright Visiting Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) and also at UCLA. In 1990—91 he was invited to the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR) as a Distinguished Visiting Professor of History sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Between 1988—97 he taught at UCSB Summer Sessions; between 1994 and 1997 he was founder and director of UCSB’s The New Europe program. He was an István Deák Chair Visiting Professor at the History Department of Columbia University in the City of New York in 2001, 2007, and 2010. His Humboldt Prize of 2002 took him to the Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte (Max Planck Institute for the History of Science) in Berlin, Germany. Since 1992 he has been a regular visiting professor at the Education Abroad Program of the University of California in Budapest, Hungary (1992—2008), at the Salzburg Seminar's Center for the Study of American Culture and Language in Salzburg, Austria (1995), in the Nationalism Studies Program of the Central European University (CEU), Budapest, Hungary (1999—2001), in the UNESCO-sponsored Minority Studies Program of the Institute of Sociology of ELTE (1995, 1997), and the IES Abroad Vienna (formerly Institute of European Studies) in Vienna, Austria (1999—). Between 2003 and 2009 he acted as a teamleader, with Frank Hadler (GWZO, Leipzig), of the European Science Foundation Programme "Representations of the Past: The Writing of National Histories in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Europe" (Team 4: "Overlapping National Histories"), coedited as Disputed Territories and Shared Pasts: Overlapping National Histories in Modern Europe, published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2011.
Honors and Awards
Tibor Frank was awarded the Országh Award in 2000, the Humboldt Forschungspreis (Humboldt Research Award) from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation for 2002, the Szent-Györgyi Albert Prize of Hungary in 2005. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, London in 2006.
Books (since 1999)
Family
He is married to psychologist Zsuzsa F. Várkonyi, an honorary university professor; his son Benedek Frank is an economist.