The Institute

After the regime change in 1989 the practice of Hungarian social scientific education has also experienced significant changes. Despite the discipline’s more than one hundred years of history, it was only the newly emerging approaches that made it possible to include cultural anthropology to the Hungarian higher educational system. Before that the cultural anthropology did not have institutional background, professional recognition or acknowledged publication resources. In 1990 the ELTE established its own group. In 1992 the first independent cultural anthropological department of Hungary was founded at the University of Miskolc, under the name of Department of Cultural and Visual Anthropology. The founder and the first head of the department was Ernő Kunt. In 1993 both the ELTE and the University of Miskolc received the right to offer cultural anthropology program. Both universities experienced a huge interest by students toward the program. In the ELTE the program ran as a minor, while in Miskolc the university offered anthropology major. In 1998 the University of Miskolc completed its cultural anthropology major with correspondence courses. In 2002 the position of the program changed. The new Act on Higher Education declared that, just like almost every program offered in humanities, the cultural anthropological program has to be taken together with another program in humanities. In spite of the new administrative regulation the department was able to strengthen its positions among the prospective students and had a very high number of applications, exceeding its capacity number.

As part of the “Bologna process” the cultural anthropology became one of the 102 majors offered in Hungary. In 2006 the University of Miskolc accredited the first and only BA program in cultural anthropology in Hungary. In 2008 the MA program in applied and visual anthropology has also been accredited.