Béla Vilmos Mihalik, assistant professor at the ELTE Department of Auxiliary Studies of History,  Béla Vilmos Mihalik, Senior Research Fellow and Scientific Secretary of the Institute of History at ELTE RCH has been awarded the prestigious Consolidator Grant from the European Research Council (ERC). He is the only recipient of the Consolidator Grant in the field of humanities among the two Hungarian winners this year – and this is already the third ERC project at his research institute.

Béla Vilmos Mihalik's project analyzing the connections between "popular politics" and early modern state-building focuses on the history of East-Central Europe between 1650 and 1800. The research centers on the political practices of local communities and examines how lower social groups – such as peasant communities, minorities, or women – might have influenced denominational organization and contemporary state-building processes.

The research group uses the Roman Catholic parish as a comparative "laboratory" unit, through which three major areas can be examined: parish wealth and economy, pastoral activities and norm adherence, and the organization of local religious life. The project reveals patterns of communal-parish control and offers a new, bottom-up approach to studying late Catholic confessionalization and early modern state-building.

"I am particularly pleased that for the third time in just a few years, we have managed to secure this prestigious grant for our institute. The project is based on international collaboration and strengthens the European embeddedness of Hungarian historical science," emphasized Béla Vilmos Mihalik.

Source: ELTE HTK, ELTE