News and Events Main

Sustainable building and construction practices were in focus May 23 at a conference at CEU organized by the Hungarian Ministry of Rural Development, Ministry of the Interior, and the Ministry of National Development with assistance from CEU’s Department of Environmental Sciences and Policy. Presentations by state representatives, green building professionals, researchers and academics covered topics from integrating sustainability into national development policy to innovative strategies for building environmentally friendly structures.

The fall of the Byzantine Empire meant the end of a central cultural “home” for Orthodox Christian art, despite its prolific, ongoing production. Modern scholars have struggled with how to define art and related methodologies made in the centuries following the fall of Constantinople. To that end, CEU's Center for Eastern Mediterranean Studies (CEMS) hosted top scholars in the field for its May 15-16 conference “Post-Byzantine” Art: Orthodox Christian Art in a “Non-Byzantine” World?

At a three-day conference hosted by CEU’s Department of History, entitled “Declines and Falls: Perspectives in European History and Historiography,” around 60 historians from four continents and 17 countries ventured to “historicize the current experience and discussion of ‘decline’, ‘crisis’ and their cognate concepts.” The conference celebrated the 20th anniversary of the European Review of History (ERH), a peer-reviewed journal that counts CEU as one of its homes.

The South and South East Asian Studies Group (SASEAS) was formed at CEU on May 7 as a multidisciplinary space for sharing research and ideas related to this emerging part of the world, which is playing an increasingly large role in global affairs. The launch event featured a screening of the film, “India Untouched: Stories of a People Apart,” an acclaimed documentary on social discrimination in India.

It is one thing to read about how a globally successful company developed its strategy. It is quite another to have one of their high-ranking executives explain it in person. Two such speakers recently shared their insights in the “Innovation and Intrapreneurship” course taught by Professor György Bögel.

Imagine living for a year in New York City without using electricity or creating any trash or carbon emissions. Add to that, buying nothing for 365 days except locally-grown food and you've got the story of “No-Impact Man” Colin Beavan, a former history writer and environmental activist. Beavan, his wife, and their then two-year-old daughter used a rickshaw for transportation and frequented city fountains when the hot weather got to be too much for them.

Alumni remain an important and integral part of a university, Dean Mel Horwitch emphasized with his opening remarks during the Spring Alumni Evening held last Friday, May 10 at CEU Business School. He also reaffirmed the importance of business schools in contributing to entrepreneurship and how they can help create open societies, the idea upon which Central European University was founded.

Wolf prize winner László Lovász will give a lecture on 13 May 11am

Title:

Which graphs are extremal?

Extremal graph theory has matured in a sense; besides studying specific extremal problems, now we can pose and, in part, answer general questions like: Which inequalities between subgraph densities are valid? What is the possible structure of extremal graphs?

Ervin Gyori, professor in the Department of Mathematics and its Applications, was awarded the Academy Prize by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences earlier this month, in recognition of his outstanding work in the fields of combinatorics and extremal graph theory. The Academy also noted his other active organizational contributions to Hungary’s scientific community.

CEU mourns the passing of noted religious scholar, author, and CEU honorary PhD recipient Geza Vermes, who died on May 8. Vermes was a great friend to CEU's Center for Religious Studies and a distinguished presenter at the University. His contributions to academia and to intellectual life at CEU will be greatly missed.