BERNARD ADAMS, literary translator, was born in 1937 in the Black Country of the English West Midlands. Educated at King Edward’s School, Birmingham, he did his national service in the regimental band of the Royal Scots Greys, then read Hungarian and Russian at Pembroke College, Cambridge. He was awarded an American PEN translation award in 2008, and in the same year won second prize in the John Dryden translation competition in the UK. In 2009, he received a translation award from the Füst Milán Foundation of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. He has published some 30 titles. In 2006, he moved to Hungary, and now lives at Zánka, on the northern shore of Lake Balaton.
MÁRK AURÉL ÉRSZEGI is special adviser on religion and diplomacy at the Hungarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Graduated in International and Diplomatic Sciences from the University of Triest (Italy) in 1999, studied Theology and Canon Law at the Pázmány Péter Catholic University in Budapest. He has been working for the Hungarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs since 2001 in different positions. Posted to the Embassy of Hungary in Rome (2008–2012), later to the Embassy of Hungary to the Holy See as Deputy Chief of Mission (2015–2020). Also known as an expert in Vatican affairs, he has authored several articles on this subject and a book titled Pápa – Szentszék – Vatikán (The Pope, the Holy See, the Vatican). He is member of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem, Circolo S. Pietro, and the board of editors of Essays in Church History in Hungary (Magyar Egyháztörténeti Vázlatok).
JOSEPH B. IMRE is a historian, researcher, and entrepreneur in Canada. He holds an Honour BA from the University of Toronto, MA from the University of Bristol, and a post-graduate diploma from the London School of Economics and Political Science in history and political science. His research focus is primarily Medieval and Early Modern history, but he has also written extensively on Hungarian historiography in the twentieth century.
LONNIE R. JOHNSON,, a graduate of St. John’s University in Minnesota with a Doctorate in Philosophy from the University of Vienna, has lived in Vienna since 1973 and worked with various organizations involved in international academic exchange and research. He has published books and articles on Viennese, Austrian, and Central European history, including Central Europe: Enemies, Neighbors, Friends (3rd revised and expanded edition, Oxford University Press, 2011). He served as the executive director of the Austrian–American Fulbright Commission from 1997–2019 and is currently working on a book, Remembering and Forgetting Fulbright: The Remarkable History of the Fulbright Program, 1946–2021, to be published by the University of Arkansas Press.
BORIS KÁLNOKY grew up in Germany, the United States, Holland, and France. His family left Hungary in 1947. He studied politics and history in Hamburg and went on to work at the German daily Die Welt in 1987. In 1995, he became Balkans Correspondent for Die Welt, based in Budapest, and moved on, in 2004, to become Middle East correspondent, based in Istanbul. He is the author of Ahnenland (Munich: Droemer Verlag, 2011), a book about what happened to his family and Hungary since 1952. He returned to Budapest in 2013, still for Die Welt. He also writes for a number of other media in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Since September 2020, he has been head of Media School at Mathias Corvinus Collegium, Budapest.
JÁNOS KUBASSEK, geographer, head of the Hungarian Geographical Museum since 1983. Graduated in Debrecen as a history and geography teacher, and received his PhD from the University of Pécs in 2005. His main research areas include the history of science, Hungarian travellers, and the activities of geographical explorers. He was a member of the Hungarian Scientific Africa Expedition (1987–1988). Dr Kubassek was a visiting scholar in South Korea in 1991 and a Fulbright visiting fellow in Washington DC in 2006 doing research in the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian Institute. He is the author and editor of 28 books, and published more than 300 articles. He is also the editor-in-chief of the journal Földrajzi Múzeumi Tanulmányok (Papers of the Geographical Museum).
ANTAL MOLNÁR is former director of the Hungarian Academy in Rome, current director of the Institute of History, Research Center for the Humanities in Budapest, and associate professor at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest. His publications include 18 scholarly volumes, among them Le Saint-Siège, Raguse et les missions catholiques de la Hongrie Ottomane 1572–1647 (2007); Confessionalization on the Frontier (2019); and co-authored with Tamás Tóth, The Falconieri Palace in Rome (2016).
ISTVÁN OROSZ is one of the most versatile Hungarian graphic artists. In 2011, he was awarded the Kossuth Prize, Hungary’s highest distinction for the arts. His graphic works are often related to postmodernism by archaic forms, art historical references, stylistic quotations, and playful self-reflection. He has created many famous posters; he makes animation films, and is preoccupied with the art and science of optical illusions and anamorphic design. He is also concerned with the ambiguities of spatial constructions. These interests led him to write a book on Hans Holbein’s famous The Ambassadors and the Pharaoh, which exhibits a mastery of prose style and psychology, and also includes his own consummate poems.
JOHN O’SULLIVAN, journalist, editor-at-large of National Review in New York where he served as editor-in-chief for ten years. He was a special adviser to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in Downing Street and later assisted her in the writing of her two volumes of memoirs. He has held a wide variety of senior editorial positions in the media on both sides of the Atlantic. He is the founder and co-chairman of the Atlantic Initiative, an international bipartisan organization dedicated to reinvigorating and expanding the Atlantic community of democracies, launched at the Congress of Prague in May 1996 by President Václav Havel and Margaret Thatcher. Until 2011, he was the executive editor of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty in Prague. Currently he is the president of the Danube Institute, Budapest, and editor-at-large of Hungarian Review and Hungarian Conservative.
ÉVA ESZTER SZABÓ, historian, Americanist and Latin Americanist, senior lecturer, and deputy head of the Department of American Studies, School of English and American Studies, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest. Her courses and research have focused on inter-American relations, US immigration history and immigration policy, and global migration issues in global politics. Her most significant work is entitled US Foreign and Immigration Policies in the Caribbean Basin (Savaria University Press, 2007). Her recent research targets the history and current developments of a growing US American diaspora and border studies.