Resident Fellows
Attila Bátorfy is a master teacher of journalism, media studies and information graphics at the Media Department of Eötvös Loránd University. He is also member of the investigative journalism center Átlátszó's data team, and head of the visual journalism project ATLO. Previously he created data-based media literacy and digital humanities projects in collaboration with Transparency International Hungary, Center for Independent Journalism Budapest, Mérték Media Monitor, the Asimov Foundation, Central European University, the Open Society Archives and the Association of Hungarian Content Providers. He is also fellow and data advisor at CMDS, and he serves on the editorial board of Médiakutató, a quarterly scientific journal of Media Studies. For his journalistic work, he received the Transparency-Soma Prize, Quality Journalism Prize, the Eörsi János Memorial Award and Prima Junior, and he was also shortlisted for the GEN Data Journalism Award. He is currently working on his doctoral thesis on the early history of information graphics in Hungary. His scientific publications cover a wide range of topics such as political influence in the media, state advertising, media system theories, information graphics history and theory of subcultures. He regularly gives speeches and data visualization workshops for journalists, NGOs, academic researchers and private enterprises. He lives in Budapest with his wife and their son.
Amy Brouillette is the Director of Advocacy at the International Press Institute, an organization that works with a global network of editors, media executives and leading journalists to defend press freedom and independent journalism around the world. As a resident fellow at CMDS since 2011, Amy has more than a decade of experience developing and leading research, advocacy, monitoring, and capacity-building projects focused on supporting and enabling independent journalism. From 2013 to 2016, she served as director the European Media Project at CMDS, a project that focused on providing tools and training for journalists and human rights defenders in Central and Southeastern Europe. Prior to joining IPI, Amy served as director of research for Ranking Digital Rights, a project that holds tech companies accountable for policies and practices affecting freedom of expression, information, and privacy. She holds a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Colorado, Boulder, and a master’s degree in history from Central European University in Budapest.
Ian M. Cook is Director of Studies at Open Learning Initiative (OLIve), Budapest, and a researcher at Central European University (CEU). An anthropologist and multimodal scholar, his research and praxis focus on urban India, environmental justice, higher education, and podcasting. He is part of the Allegra Lab editorial collective. Personal website: The City as a River
Kate Coyer is a Research Affiliate with the Center for Media, Data and Society, and an Affiliate of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. She leads CMDS’ work related to technology and civil society and was previously Executive Director of the Center. Kate holds a PhD in Media and Communications from Goldsmiths College, University of London and held a post-doctoral research fellowship with the Center for Global Communication Studies at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania. She currently teaches at CEU and the College of Europe in Warsaw. Her research examines the use of new and old technologies for social change and the impacts on human rights; as well as social media policy and practice; misinformation and political communication; the complexities of media, technology and politics; and community media and alternative communications. A longtime radio producer and organizer, her work supports digital rights advocacy, community media, and communication access for refugees. Her work and citations have been featured on NPR, BBC, Washington Post, Al Jazeera, New Scientist, Wired, Business Insider, and others.
Zselyke Csaky is Research Director for Europe and Eurasia at Freedom House and oversees Nations in Transit, an annual survey of democracy from Central Europe to Central Asia. Her research interests focus primarily on the politics of Central Europe and on the state of the media regionally and globally. She has written extensively on issues of democratic governance and press freedoms in Central Europe and the Balkans and co-hosts In Between Europe, a podcast focusing on the region. Prior to joining Freedom House, she served as researcher in different capacities at other international organizations. She is a CEU alumna and discovered the beauty of law when applied in privacy and freedom of expression cases while doing her master’s in Human Rights.
Zsuzsa Detrekői is a TMT lawyer and a part-time academic. She was a consultant of OpenNet Initative at Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University for several months in 2007 and 2008. She was the general counsel of major Hungarian online content provider origo.hu. Currently she is legal counsel of a major ISP in Hungary. She also provides legal support for the Association of Hungarian Content Providers. Her research area is online content and internet related regulations about what she wrote her thesis on and achieved PhD in 2016.
Miklos Haraszti is a Hungarian author, professor, and human rights promoter. His books, including A Worker in a Worker’s State and The Velvet Prison, have been translated into many languages. He was a founder of Hungary’s democracy and free press movement in the 1970s. In 1989, he participated in the "Roundtable Negotiations" on the transition to free elections. As a member of Hungary's parliament in the 1990s, he authored the country's first laws on press freedom. From 2004 to 2010, he directed the media freedom watchdog institution of the 56-nation Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). Recently, he headed the OSCE's observation missions for elections in the U.S. and in Kazakhstan. He has taught at several universities, including CEU, Bard College, Northwestern University, and the New School. In the past two years, he gave courses on global press freedom issues at Columbia University. 
Jessie Labov is a Resident Fellow in the Center for Media, Data and Society, as well as the Director of Academic and Institutional Development at McDaniel College Budapest. At CEU, she worked as a member of the Digital Humanities Initiative, and the Text Analysis Across Disciplines Initiative. Recent publishing projects include a co-edited volume with Friederike Kind-Kovacs, Samizdat, Tamizdat and Beyond: Transnational Media During and After Socialism (Berghahn 2013), and a monograph entitled Transatlantic Central Europe: Contesting Geography and Redefining Culture Beyond the Nation (CEU Press 2019). In addition to writing on Polish film, Yugoslav popular culture, and Central European Jewish identity, she has also worked on a variety of digital humanities projects concerned with issues of canon formation, text mining, and visualizing the receptive pathways of literary journals. Courses at CEU: Beyond Illustration: New Approaches to Research and Teaching with the Digital Humanities (Fall 2017); Data Collection and Curation (University-Wide Course, Fall 2017); Mining History: Digital Practices in Humanities Research (Winter 2018); Introduction to Text Analysis from Close Reading to Machine Learning and Applied Text Analysis from Close Reading to Machine Learning (University-Wide Methods Course, Fall 2018). In June 2020 she will co-direct the 2nd year of the CEU Summer University Course Cultures of Dissent in Eastern Europe (1945-1989): Research Approaches in the Digital Humanities.
Tom Popper is a journalist with 30 years of experience, including close to 10 years editing for daily newspapers in the United States and extensive work for business, policy and travel publications in Europe. Since the early 1990s, he has been head editor of several English-language publications produced in Hungary, including Budapest Week, Time Out Budapest and the Budapest Business Journal.
Dean Starkman is a fellow-in-residence at the Center for Media, Data and Society at the Central European University, Budapest. He is a senior editor at the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, the Washington, D.C., based news organization best known for its 2016 Panama Papers investigation. Since joining ICIJ in 2017, Starkman has helped to lead projects including the Paradise Papers, Mauritius Leaks, the China Cables, the Luanda Leaks, and, recently, the FinCEN Files, an expose of global banks' role in money laundering. He is the author of The Watchdog That Didn’t Bark: The Financial Crisis and the Disappearance of Investigative Journalism (Columbia U. Press; 2014), an acclaimed analysis of business-press failures prior to the 2008 financial crisis that provides a groundbreaking theoretical framework for journalism’s past, present, and future. Previously, he ran the Columbia Journalism Review’s business section, “The Audit,” a web-based provider of media criticism, reporting and analysis. He was also Wall Street correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, reporting on the intersection of finance and society from New York. His work on finance and media has also appeared in The New Republic, The Nation, Mother Jones, Washington Monthly, among other publications. An investigative reporter for more than two decades, Starkman covered white-collar crime and national real estate for The Wall Street Journal and helped lead the Providence Journal’s investigative team to a Pulitzer Prize in 1994.
Judit Szakács is a researcher with a background in sociology, journalism, and English language and literature. Her main research interests include minority media and minority representation in the mainstream media as well as in social media. She has collaborated with scholars in international research projects in a variety of topics. In addition, she works as a media monitor, which provides her with valuable insights into contemporary practices in the Hungarian media. She volunteers as a contributor to the Hungarian corruption database compiled by K-Monitor.
György Túry, Associate Professor, holds a Ph.D. in Literary and Cultural Studies and is a two-time Fulbright grant recipient (Columbia University and Ohio State University). His interests range from literary/cultural studies to media studies, and has published papers on gonzo and new journalism, literary journalism in Hungary and Poland, Marshall McLuhan, Susan Sontag, Hans Magnus Enzensberger and the 1960s New Left’s visions of the media futures, and the cultural politics and practices of illiberalism, among other topics. Apart from literary and cultural studies he has worked in international higher education management. In recent years his interests have also included the artistic use of inter-, multi- and transmedia in installations, especially in the works of British artist Isaac Julian and Greek artist George Drivas. Following Mark Deuze, he thinks that we no longer live with, but in media.
Veszna Wessenauer is Research Manager with Ranking Digital Rights, working on Index research. She holds an MA in Human Rights from Central European University, where she focused on issues related to internet governance and media freedom. Prior to joining RDR, she worked with several Hungarian and international NGOs, including as a policy analyst for Political Capital, a Hungarian think tank focused on democracy and rule of law in Central Europe. The focus of her work has been on internet governance, digital rights, disinformation, active citizenship, and civic engagement. She has also previously served as a research fellow at the Center for Media, Data and Society (Central European University – School of Public Policy), researching topics related to journalistic source protection, online privacy and data protection, and online political extremism. Veszna currently lives in Budapest, Hungary.