1. Gizella Balogné Nagy, core member
2. Alexandra Fodor, core member
3. Zoltán G. Kiss, core member, chair
4. Luca Garai, core member
5. Mark Newson, core member
6. Péter Őri, core member
7. Attila Starcevic, core member
8. Péter Szigetvári, core member
9. Nathaniel Torres, core member

• Péter A. Lázár, former core member
• Mohamad Ali Khalil, doctoral student
• Vencel Wutka, doctoral student
• Alexander Bishenden, teaching assistant
• Alma Kántor, teaching assistant
• Hanna Lénárt, teaching assistant
• Gergely Horváth, student representative

1. G. Kiss begins the meeting with introducing the Department’s new core members, Gizella Balogné Nagy, senior lecturer, and Luca Garai, assistant lecturer. Nathan Torres has been promoted to be senior lecturer, and Miklós Törkenczy has received his emeritus professorship. Two new external instructors have joined the Department, Viktória Pesti and Dominika Vozár (MA students). Péter A. Lázár, Mohamad Ali Khalil, and Firas Shbeeb have remained external lecturers for the autumn semester.
2. Alma Kántor, Hanna Lénárt have joined the Department as new teaching assistants, Alexander Bishenden, now an MA stduent, has remained a TA for another year. The TAs introduce themselves and say a few words about their plans with regards their theses.
3. PhD defence news: Rami Alwardat has successfully defended his dissertation, there will be defences in the coming weeks by Solomon Owusu Amoh and Firas Shbeeb. Unfortunately, no new PhD student has enrolled this semester even though we conducted Stipendium Hungaricum interviews with candidates, and made recommendations for acceptance, but their host countries withdrew their support. Hopefully, next year we will get new PhD students, their presence is highly important.
4. The previous semester, including the exams, went without major issues. However, there were complaints from the Office of Studies that in some cases students got their seminar marks entered in Neptun very late. G. Kiss asks the Department to make sure they enter all seminar marks on the week after the semester ends the latest.
5. The current semester has started without major problems. G. Kiss gives a summary of the group sizes in the various seminars. DELG could launch enough seminars, although certain groups have had to be enlarged far beyond 20 students, which is far from ideal. Even with the help of external lecturers, PhD students, the Department is running the seminar courses at an absolute maximum. The usual problem of late-arriving Erasmus students has occurred this semester, too, but we have been able to find them empty places in groups eventually. G. Kiss informs the Department that according to Nóra Németh, some international students, like those coming via Erasmus, may have a fixed timetable for their first semester. Currently, it is difficult to judge how this can be implemented without issues.
6. G. Kiss reminds the Department that students will have to submit their thesis titles and select a supervisor soon, the deadline is around mid October. He asks all to encourage students to write their thesis on a linguistics topic.
7. Both the recommended thesis topics and the final examination questions and reading lists (for both BA and MA) must be reviewed and potentially revised so that it can be introduced for next semester’s final exams.
8. The Department will welcome Valandis Bardzokas, from the University of Thessaloniki (Nov. 9–13), who will visit us as part of an Erasmus programme. Alexandra Fodor will oversee his stay, and he will give a talk on his current research.
9. The NKFIH grant that is supervised by Péter Szigetvári will end at the end of September. This grant was invaluable for the Department. All core members are strongly encouraged to look out and apply for any future scientific grants that will be advertised.
10. The annual Össznyelvész conference will take place earlier than usual (21–22 Oct.), Garai and Torres update the Department about where the organisation currently stands.
11. The Department is planning to organise a “Nádasdy 80” conference, to celebrate his 80th birthday next February. Szigetvári says a few words about these plans.
12. Péter Őri gives an update on TDK/OTDK.
13. G. Kiss reminds all core members to apply for the Kari publikációs díj - Faculty publication excellence award, whose deadline is 15 November.
14. G. Kiss updates the Department about some topics that were raised at the latest School Council meeting, among them Erasmus students’ possible “apprenticeship” at the School’s departments, a plan by DAS to launch a “cognitive and cultural linguistics” specialisation, and that international students can no longer ask for “studies in a uniquely tailored study arrangement” in their first semester. G. Kiss reminds all that this special study arrangement can be applied for by students only under very specific circumstances, and that all of us can contact Tímea Tiboldi if a student approaches us with something like this.

minutes kept by Zoltán G. Kiss
verified by Péter Szigetvári

Budapest, 2026-09-15