Members of the Research Group

• Dr. Karolina Lendák-Kabók – Principal Investigator, Momentum Research Group Leader

• Sofija Dakic – PhD student

Doctoral students, as well as a Momentum COFUND postdoctoral researcher, will also join the group.

Dr. Karolina Lendák-Kabók is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest. Her research focuses on minority studies, intermarriage, gender, and identity in Central and Eastern Europe. She earned her PhD in Gender Studies at the University of Novi Sad, where she later served as an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Philosophy, Department of Social Work. Following this, she was awarded a prestigious Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Faculty of Social Sciences, Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE) in Budapest (2022–2024). Her work has been supported by the Bolyai János Research Scholarship and international fellowships in Canada, the United States, Australia, and Hungary. She is the author of numerous journal articles, special issues, and a monograph published by Palgrave Macmillan (2022). Her awards include the ELTE Promising Researcher Award (2023), the Anđelka Milić Award for advancing gender equality at the University of Novi Sad (2022), and the Crystal Globe Award for her research achivement as a young scholar (2017). She also contributes to European research networks, serves on editorial boards, and from 2025 is Associate Editor of Nationalities Papers. Between 2025 and 2030, she will head the Lendület (Momentum) research group funded by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

Dr. Lucija Balikić is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Department of Minority Studies, ELTE Faculty of Social Sciences in Budapest. She obtained her PhD from Central European University (CEU) in Vienna and previously studied at the University of Zagreb and University of Southampton. She taught at CEU, Corvinus University of Budapest and was a visiting researcher at the European University Institute in Florence and at the Slovenian Academy of Sciences. Her research interests include modern intellectual and social history of East Central Europe, particularly Yugoslavia and Hungary in 19th and 20th centuries. On these and related topics, she published a monograph, acted as a co-editor to an edited volume (Routledge), a co-editor of a special issue of East Central Europe, as well as published several original research articles in renowned journals. Within the project, she will conduct historical research on the legal, social and intellectual aspects of mixedness through marriage in Hungary and Yugoslavia, from late 19th century till the fall of state-socialism. Specifically, she will focus on the evolution of legislature regulating religiously and ethnically mixed marriages, legal plurality, as well as social and intellectual attitudes towards mixed couples and families, across the post-imperial transition, as well as transition to and from socialism.

Students contributing to the work of the research group

	Sofija Dakic is a PhD student in Sociology at the ELTE Faculty of Social Sciences in Budapest, and a recipient of the Stipendium Hungaricum Scholarship. She earned an MA in Teacher Education and a BA in Sociology from the University of Belgrade. Before beginning her doctoral studies, she taught sociology at XIV Belgrade Gymnasium. Within the Momentum Research Group, she contributes to the development of the project’s methodology, including the construction of interview guides and focus group instruments. She conducts interviews in Serbian across multiple levels of the study, including conversations with couples as well as meso-level interviews with teachers, clergy, and representatives of civil society organizations. She works with both qualitative and quantitative methods and is proficient in a range of research tools used in sociological inquiry.
	Antónia Bodnár is a Sociology BA student at ELTE Faculty of Social Sciences. During the autumn semester of the 2025/26 academic year, she worked in the MIXED research group as an intern, carrying out research assistant tasks and serving as a social media manager. She supported the team in qualitative research, communication, and visual content production.
	Fanni Farkas is a Sociology BA student at ELTE Faculty of Social Sciences. During the autumn semester of the 2025/26 academic year, she worked as an intern in the MIXED research group, where she contributed to data processing for a study on mixed marriages, with her main responsibility being the preparation of detailed interview transcripts.
	Kiara Kadáková is a Minority Policy MA student at ELTE Faculty of Social Sciences. During the autumn semester of the 2025/26 academic year and the spring semester of the 2026/27 academic year, she works in the MIXED  research group as a departmental demonstrator and intern, carrying out research assistant tasks. Her responsibilities include supporting research processes, participating in data collection, and reviewing and organizing academic literature.
	Christine Plank is a Minority Policy MA student at ELTE Faculty of Social Sciences. During the autumn semester of the 2025/26 academic year and the spring semester of the 2026/27 academic year, she works in the MIXED research group as a department demonstrator and an intern, carrying out research assistant tasks. Her responsibilities include the Hungarian-German mixed couples research, contacting and liaising with interview participants, recording interviews, and processing relevant academic literature.
	Anna Siroki is a Sociology BA student at ELTE Faculty of Social Sciences. During the autumn semester of the 2025/26 academic year she worked as an intern in the MIXED research group, where she participated in the preparatory phase of a research project on mixed marriages as a research assistant. Her tasks included compiling and organizing the project bibliography, collecting and reviewing relevant academic sources, and carrying out various ad hoc research and administrative duties.