About: 

Benedek Pál is a PhD canditate at the Historical Studies Department of the Central European University in Vienna. His research focuses on Polish and Hungarian political and economic thinking in the last decade of state socialism. In his dissertation project titled Between Crisis and Reform, Polish and Hungarian Critical Intellectual Discourses on the Future of State Socialism, 1979–1989 he maps a wide range of debates on political, economic and social issues in order to uncover different understandings on the concepts of ‘crisis’ and ‘reform’. In his endeavor he aims to tell an intellectual pre-history of the transformations and trace back the emergence of such alternatives to state socialism as market economy and liberal democracy, which became the constitutive elements of the post-1989 democracies. Before joining CEU, Benedek covered Polish politics as a contributing writer in the Hungarian media. He continues to comment on major Polish political events for Hungarian platforms.

Publications: 

• Pál, Benedek. “Negotiating the Future of State Socialism. Liberals and Their Contenders in Hungary, 1980-1987.” In Market Economists Beyond the West The Agents of Peripheral Liberalism, 1970-2020, edited by Tobias Rupprecht. Routledge, 2026.

• Pál, Benedek. “‘We All Talk About Crisis, but What Do We Mean by Crisis?’: Polish and Hungarian Intellectuals Negotiating the Crisis of State Socialism in the First Half of the 1980s.” In East Central European Crisis Discourses in the Twentieth Century: A Never-Ending Story?, edited by Balázs Trencsényi, Lucija Balikić, Una Blagojević, and Isidora Grubački. New York: Routledge, 2024.