Staff - Metropolitan Research Institute

József Hegedüs

managing director

József Hegedüs, economist (MA) and sociologist (PhD), is a founding member and managing director of the Metropolitan Research Institute, Budapest. He was co-organizer of the East European Working Group of the European Network for Housing Research from 1989 to 2015, and a member of the Housing Policy Council, a high-level advisory group in housing policy matters in Hungary from 1996 to 2012. Since 1994 he has been a part-time Associate Professor (from 2007 Adjunct Professor) at Corvinus University Budapest, and has also been teaching urban and municipal finance courses at ELTE University, Central European University’s Summer School and the Budapest Technical University. He has widely published in journals and contributed to books dealing with urban and governance issues, and was co-editor of several books. He has been working in several international housing and urban research/technical assistance projects in the region (Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Russia, Kazakhstan, Georgia, etc.).

+ 36 30 9645935

hegedus [at] mri [.] hz

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Hanna Szemző

managing director

Hanna Szemző (PhD in History, Master’s degree in Sociology and History) has been working for Metropolitan Research Institute for more than 15 years. She has extensive experience in research and consultancy in the fields of urban development, social inclusion, energy efficiency, demography, welfare, and governance analysis. She has participated in various 5th, 6th and 7th Framework Programmes of the European Union, prepared strategic development concepts for local governments, and has provided consultancy for Habitat for Humanity International in Armenia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Currently she coordinates the EU financed HomeLab project which connects employment and housing provision in five pilot sites in the Visegrad four countries.

+ 36 30 755 3788

szemzo [at] mri [.] hu

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Iván Tosics

managing director

Iván Tosics (born in Budapest in 1952) is one of the principals of Metropolitan Research Institute. He is mathematician and sociologist (PhD) and research fellow with long experience in urban sociology, strategic development, housing policy and EU regional policy issues. Since late 2011 he was one of the three Thematic Pole Managers of the URBACT programme, which has changed since January 2016 into Programme Expert position. He teaches at the University of Pécs, Department of Political Studies, Doctoral School. He is Vice Chair of the European Network for Housing Research (ENHR), Board member of the European Urban Research Association (EURA). He was member until 2013 of the HS-NET Advisory Board to UN-HABITAT. He is the Policy Editor of the journal ‘Urban Research and Practice’, member of the Editorial Advisory Board for the ‘Journal of Housing and the Built Environment’ and for ‘Housing Studies.

tosics [at] mri [.] hu

+ 36 30 964 5937

Fruzsina Balás

office manager

Fruzsina Balás (civil engineer, sociologist) is one of the founders of Metropolitan Research Institute. Prior to MRI she had been working in the Urban Planning Company of Budapest Municipality where she was responsible for designing the heating system of panel blocks, then – in line with her studies in sociology – she started to conduct research on housing conditions inside and outside Budapest. These researches continued on in her next job at ÉGSZI. At the start of MRI she dealt with e issues of urban rehabilitation and organised conferences on different issues of housing policy. Gradually she became the colleague being responsible for most of the administrative management tasks of the company by taking care for the financial transfers, preparing some of the legal documents and controlling the accounting processes.

balas [at] mri [.] hu

+ 36 1 2179041

Éva Gerőházi

economist

Éva Gerőházi (MsC in Economics) joint MRI in 1997 and since then she has gained rich experience in diverse fields of urban development. She started her carrier as the project manager of the residential building renovation programme of USAID. Since then she continued on dealing with the energy efficient renovation of residential buildings from time to time broadening the scope to Central and Eastern Europe. She elaborated urban development plans for various Hungarian municipalities and also dealt with the special problems of deprived neighbourhoods. Eva has participated in different research programmes financed by the European Union in the fields of renovation of big housing estates, fostering the community self-organised construction and renovation of the housing stock and the green infrastructure governance in European cities. Eva performed different roles in research projects as a project leader, researcher and knowledge broker.

gerohazi [at] mri [.] hu

+ 36 30 8666738

Ildikó Horváth

administration

Ildikó Horváth has been working as Metropolitan Research Institute’s administrative coordinator since 1992. Besides managing office logistics and technical infrastructure, her IT skills (e.g. in word processing, image processing, and chart editing software) also support the timely and efficient work of the MRI staff.

+ 36 30 5761472

horvath [at] mri [.] hu

Vera Horváth

sociologist

Vera Horvath has been a staff member of Metropolitan Research Institute since 2012. She obtained her Master’s Degree in International relations at the Corvinus University of Budapest, where she is currently a student of the Sociology Doctoral School. In her work she is primarily involved in housing policy and sociological research of residential areas; but she has also been participating in projects focusing on housing affordability, urban development and socially sensitive urban regeneration, rental systems, and refurbishment and retrofit. She contributed by numerous projects funded by international donors (e.g. EU FP7, EU DG Employment and Social Affairs, Habitat for Humanity Hungary, HfH EMEA). She works in English and Hungarian, and communicated in French at intermediate level.

vera.horvath [at] mri [.]hu

Eszter Somogyi

sociologist

Eszter Somogyi holds a Master's Degree in economics with specialization in Sociology. She has gained over 20 years of professional experience as a researcher at the Metropolitan Research Institute. She has been participating in numerous research and consultancy projects for Hungarian and international clients, among which the evaluation and elaboration of national and local housing policies, housing finance systems and urban regeneration programs. She particularly focuses on social provision and housing affordability problems. She is currently the co-coordinator of HomeLab, a DG Employment financed project piloting integrated housing and employment service provision.

somogyi[at]mri[.]hu

+ 36 30 529 4256

somogyi [at] mri [.] hu

+ 36 30 5294256

Nóra Teller

sociologist

Nóra Teller, a sociologist at the Metropolitan Research Institute, Budapest, has worked done research for the Council of Europe, CEB, the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, in the framework of the European Commission’s 5th, 6th and 7th Framework research programmes, the European Spatial Planning Observation Network (ESPON), and has acted as consultant for the European Commission, and the World Bank. Her research and consultancy expertise relates to issues of social housing, housing (de)segregation, housing finance, housing exclusion of Roma, homelessness, evaluation of using EU funds for social inclusion, covering CEE countries and selected old member states. She is co-editor of the European Journal of Homelessness.

teller [at] mri [.] hu

+ 36 30 5761449

Andrea Tönkő

economist

Andrea Tönkő has more than twenty years of research and consultancy experience in the areas of urban development, financing public services, municipal finance and fiscal decentralization issues. She has worked as a project manager for several international programs and conducted research on municipal finance issues, including institutional, financial and organizational structure of public services (water and sewage management, solid waste treatment, transportation). She analysed the possibilities of organising and financing energy efficient interventions in residential multi-family buildings both from the point of view of low income households and from a business perspective. She developed country studies and comparative studies in several research areas, including territorial development, governance models, public utilities and intergovernmental fiscal relations. She worked out training materials for different workshops in these topics. She has training experience as well. She was coordinating the distance learning program of the CEU-OSI summer university course “Intergovernmental Fiscal Relations and Local Financial Management” for more than ten years.

tonko [at] mri [.] hu

+ 36 30 8691678

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Diana Vonnák

Research assistant

Diána Vonnák is an urban anthropologist. She joined MRI in 2018. Previously she worked on projects related to urban heritage and cultural politics, transitions in urban planning regimes and the socio-economic underpinnings of sustainable energy use. She worked at the Durham Energy Institute (UK), the Center for the Urban History of East-Central Europe (Ukraine) and the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology. She taught political anthropology as a guest lecturer at the Department of Ethnology and Social Anthropology, University of Pécs. She is an external research affiliate at Vienna University. She has done fieldwork in the Indian Himalayas, Ukraine and Hungary. At the Metropolitan Research Institute, she has been involved in OpenHeritage, a H2020 project dealing with participatory models in heritage re-use, and in the framework of a sociological research project looking at household strategies. She has edited publications and grant applications at MRI.

+36307502415

vonnak[at]mri[.]hu