Since 1997, the History Department has recognized outstanding research by its MA students, and since 1998 special recognition has taken the form of the Peter Hanák Prize, in honor of the founding Chair of the department. One or more Hanák Prizes have been awarded annually. The Prize (a book gift) goes to the author(s) of the best theses of the year determined on the basis of nominations by supervisors and evaluations by other faculty members.
2022-2023
Pavel Iushin: How Science Went Bankrupt: Pavel Florensky and the Crisis of Scientific Rationality in Fin-de-Siecle Europe
Iuliia Khabibulina: "This Fiery Cemetery:" Analysis of the Soviet Visual Discourse around the Moscow Crematoirum in the 1920S and the Early 1930s
2021-2022
Hana Abramson: Crowning Hebrew Beauty: Gender, Race, and (Trans)Nation in the Interwar Pageants of Warsaw, Tel Aviv, and Beyond
Alperen Arslan: Measuring Empire: The Emergence of Climate Science in the Ottoman Empire
2020-2021
Katarzyna Swierad-Redwood: Pedagogy of the Confessed: International Christian Humanism from the Sixteenth Century Classroom to the Seventeenth Century Pulpit
Oluwafunmilayo Akinpelu: From Postcolonial to Global Trajectories: Nigerian Novels and the Literary-Generational Historical Model
2019-2020
Margarita Pavlova: Political in Form, Cultural in Content: Civic Activism and Historic Preservation in Leningrad during Perestroika
Camilla Pletuhina-Tonev: The Patriarchate of Pec as a Contested Frontier of Faith and Loyalty: Islam, Orthodoxy, and Catholicism in the 18th-century Ottoman Balkans
2018-2019
Ivana Pruchova: Farce After Velvet: Satirical Programmes in the First Years of Czech Public Television
2017-2018
Stefan Gužvica: Learning Leninism: Factional Struggles in the Communist Party of Yugoslavia during the Great Purge (1936–1940)
Zsolt Györegy: Polite Carnival: Purim Festivities within the Sephardi Community of Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam
Reynolds Hahamovitch: Toward the Jewish Revolution: Yiddish Anarchists in New York City, 1901-1906
Ivana Mihaela Žimbrek: Mirrors of the City: Department Stores, Urban Space and the Politics of Retail in Socialist Yugoslavia (1950s-1960s)
2016-2017
Ksenia Litvinenko: Building Soviet Vyborg: Architectural Encounter in the Soviet-Finnish Borderland, 1960s-1980s
Vojtech Pojar: Quality over Quantity: Expert Knowledge and the Food Politics in Prague, 1914-1918
2015-2016
Povilas Dikavicius: Pompa Funebris: Funeral Rituals and Civic Community in Seventeenth Century Vilnius
2014-2015
Jelena Ćulibrk: Aliens at Harwell: British Representations of Nuclear Science and Nuclear Scientists, 1945 - 1961
2013-2014
Cosmin Tudor Minea: An Image for the Nation: Architecture of the Balkan Countries at the 19th Century Universal Exhibition in Paris
Emese Muntan: From Apocalyptic Prophecy to Political Discourse: The Relationship between the Theological and the Political in Reformed Funeral Speeches in Mid-Seventeenth Century Principality of Transylvania
2012-2013
Ahmet Bilaloglu: The Ottomans in the Early Enlightenment: The Case of Public Libraries in the Reign of Mahmud I (1730-54)
Adela-Gabriela Hincu: Children of the Cultural Revolution "Gone Astray": The Forlorn 1970s Generation of German Writers from Socialist Romania
Adam Mezes: Insecure boundaries. Medical experts and the returning dead on the Southern Habsburg borderland
2011-2012
Nikola Baković: Yugoslav state propaganda for the economic emigrants in West Germany 1966-1975
Agoston Berecz: The Castle of Knowing Hungarian: Hungarian Language Teaching in the Eastern Part of Dualist Hungary
2010-2011
Dmitry Mordvinov: Searching for an Imperial Ideology: the Concept of Nationality in the Works of Count Uvarov and the Journal of the Ministry for Public Enlightenment, 1833-1849
Georg Matthias Winkler: Revolution in the city: Public space and political discourse in Pest-Buda and Prague 1848
2009-2010
2008-2009
Yulia Karpova: The Stilyagi: Soviet Youth (Sub)Culture of the 1950s and its Fashion
Mircea Scrob: Diet Changes and Society: The Shift from Mamaliga to Wheaten Bread in the Case of the 19th Century Romanian Peasantry
Piotr Wcislik: What Does it Mean that Communism has Ended? Disintegration of the Dissident Counterculture and Politics of Memory in Post-Communist Poland.
2007-2008
Iona Macrea-Toma: Radio Free Europe in Paris: the Paradoxes of an Ethereal Opposition
Irina Denischenko Towards a Reconciliation of the Carnivalesque with Bakhtin's Christian Weltanschauung
2006-2007
Maria Alina Asavei: Rewriting the Canon of Visual Arts in Communist Romania. A Case Study
2005-2006
Ida Ljubić: Representation of History in the 18th and 19th Century Bosnian Franciscans’ Chronicles
Tatiana Khripachenko: The Uses of Pacifism: National and Imperial Advocates of Peace in the Russian Empire (late 19th – early 20th centuries)
2004-2005
Vladimir Petrović: Clio Takes the Stand: Historical Narratives in the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia
Maria Falina: Church Discourse in Serbian Politics: 1890s–1914
2003-2004
Tünde Barta: Divorce in the Reformed Church. The Case of the Szék District in the 17th Century
2002-2003
Domagoj Madunić: Vinko Pribojevic and the Glory of the Slavs
Gergő Baics: The role of radio communication in the Hungarian revolutionary crisis of 1956
Narcis Tulbure: Mixed Times: Drink, Work And Leisure In Oltenia In Late Communism And Post-Communism
2001-2002
Viktor Taki: Time and Change in the Political Theory of Machiavelli
Oana Mateescu: Making Persons, Placing Objects: Narratives of Theft in Southern Romania
2000-2001
Júlia Berest: The Theory of Supreme Royal Power in Early Modern England and Russia. Political Writings of James VI/I and Feofan Prokopovich
Olga Poato: Problems of Collective and Individual Self-Representation of Soviet Dissidents
1999-2000
Emese Balint: Public Punishments And Their Social Background In Sixteenth-Century Kolozsvár
Sergey Sheketov: Culture and Every Day Life of Private Entrepreneurs (Nepmen) in the Soviet Union in the Period of New Economic Policy (1921-1929)
1998-1999
Nikolai Voukov: The Uses of Folklore for Nation-Building Purposes in Bulgarian Periodicals of the 1860s and 1870s
Katerina Dysa: A Witch Before the Court and Before the Community: Official and Popular Image of Witch in Germany and in Ukraine in the Early Modern Period
1997-1998
Anahit Minasyan: The Armenian Community in Paris, 1970s through 1990s
Borbála Zsuzsanna Török: Minority Alternatives to Cultural Politics in Interwar Romania. The "Erdélyi Szépmíves Céh" Publishing House (1924-1944)