Staff

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.

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

Iván Tosics's website: https://tosics.eu/

+ 36 30 964 5937

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 and focusing on also the issues of energy poverty. 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 is currently the coordinator of the European Union H2020 UPLIFT project.

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

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 has worked 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 a 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 a member of the European Observatory on Homelessness and the European Network of Housing Housing Research, and acts as a 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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Nóra Katona

Nóra Panna Katona holds a degree in Sociology MA and Survey Statistics Msc. Before joining to MRI she participated in researches in the fields of remembrance and rural life. She started to work at MRI in 2018, contributing to the quantitative analysis of the HomeLab project. Currently she works on an international project coordinated by MRI, called UPLIFT that focuses on urban inequalities among young adults and aims to implement a reflective decision-making process in 4 European functional urban areas. Additionally, she participates in projects in the fields of housing affordability, (de)segregation and homelessness.

katona@mri.hu

Noémi Annamária Vajdovich

Noémi Annamária Vajdovich (PhD student at the Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE) Doctoral School of Earth Sciences) is currently working on the health status and health care of people experiencing homelessness. She obtained her Master's degree in 2024 in Regional Analysis at the Master of Geography, Faculty of Sciences, ELTE. During her studies, she researched methods of measuring energy poverty in the framework of the 35th National Scientific Students’ Associations Conference and also gained professional experience at the so called Hétfa Research Institute and the Pro Régio Agency.

Kata Kepes

Kata Kepes holds a BSc Social Sciences degree (UCL, London), where she focused on psychology and sociology, and a MSc Social and Cultural Psychology degree (LSE, London), where her main research interests were political psychology and behavioural science. She started as a research assistant at Metropolitan Research Institute in 2023 and continued as a junior researcher from September 2024. Her work so far has included analysing and summarising European housing practices and helping to organise the 2024 Housing Professional Forum. As part of the ESPON project, she has worked on detailed descriptions of the social and affordable housing sector in different countries and she also supports projects on energy efficient renovation.