The Budapest Academic Freedom Initiative (BAFI) held its first project workshop on the 13th of October, 2026, at the premises of ELTE Centre for Social Sciences (ELTE CSS), Institute for Political Science . Aiming at establishing offline and online spaces for discussions on academic freedom, the project runs until spring 2028. It is supported by the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin—Institute for Advanced Study and funded by the VolkswagenStiftung and the Marga and Kurt Möllgaard-Stiftung.
The first project workshop is entitled ‘Whose Academic Freedom Is It Anyway?’ and it had two underlying ambitions. On the one hand, it aimed at discussing the current transformations of academic landscapes in different institutional settings and countries, including Albania, Georgia, Hungary, Montenegro and the Netherlands. On the other hand, the workshop addressed normative and practical considerations in relation to institutional autonomies and individual academic freedoms, including constitutional rights, governance, funding and digitalization. A dedicated session provided room for trade union and professional employee association views, whereas the effects of redemocratization in post-April 2026 Hungary on academic autonomy and freedom was contemplated in different institutional contexts.
The workshop held in a hybrid (offline/online) format and will be opened by ELTE CSS Director General Zsolt Boda, Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin Head of Academic Programs Daniel Schönpflug (online) and Central European University Institute for Advanced Study Director Balázs Trencsényi (online – TBC). Workshop participants represented a diverse set of academic institutions, including Cost Action CA22121 ‘Rising nationalisms, shifting geopolitics and the future of European higher education/research openness (OPEN)’.
Epoka University, Tirana; ELTE University of Budapest, Ilia State University, Tbilisi; Masaryk University, Brno; University of Amsterdam, Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II; as well as the University of Theatre and Film Arts, Budapest.
Closing words were delivered by ELTE CSS Research Professor and newly elected member of the Hungarian Constitutional Court Nóra Chronowski and by ELTE and European University Institute in Florence Emeritus Professor Gábor Halmai.
BAFI grew out of ELTE CSS Senior Research Fellow Zoltán Ádám’s Elkana fellowship at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin in 2025/2026. He acts as the project’s academic coordinator. In his opening words to the workshop, he introduced the project and the accompanying Academic Freedom Blog (afblog.eu) for the first time to the professional and the general public.
Further details about the conference are available here.