Born in 1948 in Budapest, Hungary, Tibor FRANK is Professor of History at the Department of American Studies and Director of the School of English and American Studies, at Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE), Budapest, Hungary (1994—2001, 2006). He was one of the founding members of the Department of American Studies in ELTE in 1990 and Chair from 1992 to 1994. In Spring 2000 he set up a new Ph.D. program in American Studies at Eötvös Loránd University which he serves as program director.
Tibor FRANK was educated as a historian at ELTE and in Cambridge, England (Christ's College 1969, Darwin College 1980—81). He has been teaching at ELTE since graduating in 1971 with an M.A. in History and English, obtaining his Dr. Univ. in Modern History (1973). He received his Ph.D. in History at the Hungarian Academy of Letters and Science (1979), his Habilitation in History at ELTE in 1996, and his D.Litt. at the Hungarian Academy of Letters and Science in 1998.
Between 1987 and 1990 Tibor FRANK taught as a Fulbright Visiting Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) and also at UCLA. In 1990—91 he was invited to the University of Nevada-Reno as a Distinguished Visiting Professor of History, sponsored by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Between 1988—97 he taught History courses every Summer at UCSB Summer Sessions; between 1994 and 1997 he was founder and director of UCSB's The New Europe program. He was a Visiting Professor at the History Department of Columbia University in the City of New York in 2001 and 2007.
Since 1992 he has been a regular visiting professor at the Education Abroad Program of the University of California in Budapest, Hungary (1992—), at the Center for the Study of American Culture and Language in Salzburg, Austria (1995—), in the Nationalism Studies Program of the Central European University, Budapest, Hungary (1999—2001), in the UNESCO-sponsored Minorities Studies Program of the Institute of Sociology of ELTE (1995, 1997), and the Institute of European Studies in Vienna, Austria (1999—). He has lectured in over 30 U.S., Canadian, British and European universities and contributed to over 50 conferences in both Europe and the United States. His books, articles and chapters have been published in Austria, Brazil, Canada, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, India, Italy, Japan, Russia, and the United States.
Between 2003 and 2009 he acted as a team leader of the European Science Foundation Programme “Representations of the Past: The Writing of National Histories in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Europe” (Team 4: “Overlapping National Histories”), to be published by Palgrave Macmillan as Contested Territories and Shared Pasts: Overlapping National Histories in Modern Europe. His research has been supported by grants given by the American Philosophical Society (Philadelphia, PA, 1989—90), the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (Washington, D.C., 1989), the UCSB Interdisciplinary Humanities Center (Santa Barbara, 1988—91) and the Rockefeller Foundation (Bellagio, Italy, 1992), as well as by the Pro Cultura Hungariae Renovanda Foundation (1995), The Soros Foundation/Hungary (1996), and the Hungarian Ministry of Education (1997). He received the Széchenyi Professorial Grant from the Hungarian Ministry of Education and Culture for 1997—2001 and the Kellner Foundation research grant for 2000—2002.
Dr. FRANK founded Hungary's Modern Language Association in 1983; he served the Association as Secretary General between 1983 and 1996, and had been its Vice President between 1996 and 2007. He (co-)organized fourteen major international multidisciplinary conferences between 1972 and 2001, including one of the very first major interdisciplinary conferences in the humanities in Hungary („A hiedelmek természete, szerveződése és szerepe a mindennapi tudatban” [The Nature, Organization, and Role of Beliefs in Everyday Thinking], Visegrád 1975; proceedings publ. 1980). Other conferences initiated, directed, and with proceedings published by Professor Frank included the [Hungarian] National Student Honors Conference in the Humanities (Budapest, Hungary, 1972); American Studies (Budapest, Hungary, 1977); The Origins and Originality of American Culture (International, Budapest, Hungary, 1980); Worlds of Learning (Fulbright, International, UCSB, Santa Barbara, 1988); Modernization and Development (Fulbright, International, UCSB, Santa Barbara, CA 1989); Toward a New Europe: Revolutions in Eastern Europe (An International Summer University Forum, UCSB, Santa Barbara, CA 1990); Hungarian Spring 1991 [A Cultural Festival in Santa Barbara] (International, March-April 1991); Culture and Society in Early 20th Century Hungary (International, UCSB Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, CA, April 1991); American Democracy (International, ELTE, Hungary, 1992); Race, Ethnicity, Nation: Rethinking American Cultural Pluralism (International, ELTE, Hungary, 1993); Everyday Values in American Culture (International, ELTE, Hungary, 1994); American Philanthropy (Veszprém, Hungary, 1996); Magyarország képe [The Image of Hungary] (International, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, Hungary 1998), Theory in American Studies (International, ELTE, Hungary, 2001).
He has been on the boards of Historical Abstracts (Santa Barbara—Oxford, 1989—93, 2000—), Nationalities Papers (New York, 1989—), Polanyiana (Budapest, 1994—), and the European Journal of American Culture (Nottingham, England, 1998); as of 2005 he is Associate Editor of Nationalities Papers. He was co-president (1994—2001), and is currently honorary president (2004—), of the Hungarian Association for American Studies and was a board member of the European Association for American Studies (1994—2001). He is currently Chairman of the Board of the U.S.-Hungarian Fulbright Commission, of which he was a member between 1999 and 2002, and again from 2009. In 2007 he was elected Vice President of the Hungarian Historical Association. As of 2008 he is founding editor-in-chief of the Trefort-kert magazine of the Faculty of Humanities, ELTE.
Tibor FRANK was awarded the C. E. Eckersley Prize in 1970, the Felsőoktatási Tanulmányi Érdemérem [Hungarian Higher Education Award] in 1972, the Országh László Prize in 2000, and the Pro Universitate and the Pro Neophilologia in Hungaria awards in 2002. He received the Humboldt Forschungspreis (Research Award) from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation for 2002 and, as a result, he spent the academic year 2003—04 at the Max-Planck-Institut fuer Wissenschaftsgeschichte in Berlin, Germany. In recognition of his achievement in higher education he was awarded the Szent-Györgyi Albert Prize in 2005. He was elected Corresponding Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, London in 2006.
Recent books: From Habsburg Agent to Victorian Scholar: G. G. Zerffi 1820—1892 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000); Ein Diener seiner Herren: Werdegang des österreichischen Geheimagenten Gustav Zerffi (1820–1892) (Wien—Köln—Weimar: Böhlau Verlag, 2002); (Ed.) Discussing Hitler: Advisers of U.S. Diplomacy in Central Europe, 1934—1941 (Budapest—New York: CEU Press, 2003); (Ed.) Ever Ready to Go: The Multiple Exiles of Leo Szilard (Berlin: Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte, 2004); Picturing Austria-Hungary: The British Perception of the Habsburg Monarchy 1865—1870 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005); ハンガリー西欧幻想の罠 — 戦間期の親英米派と領土問題 Hangarii Seiou-Gensou no Wana – Senkanki no Kaneibeiha to Ryoudomondai (Tokyo: Sairyu Sha, 2008); (Hg.) Zwischen Roosevelt und Hitler. Die Geheimgespräche eines amerikanischen Diplomaten in Budapest 1934–1941 (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2009); Double Exile: Migrations of Jewish-Hungarian Professionals through Germany to the United States 1919–1945 (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2009).
Since 2003 he has been a teamleader, with Frank Hadler (GWZO, Leipzig, Germany), of a major international historiographical project of the European Science Foundation to be published as a volume of Writing the Nation, a series by Palgrave Macmillan, in 2010.
Biographical Recognition: Dictionary of International Biography 1982; 1997, 1998, 2001; Marquis Who's Who in the World 1997, 1998, 2000; Magyar és nemzetközi ki kicsoda (MTI Ki Kicsoda) 1996, 1998, 2000, 2002, 2004, 2006, 2009; The International Who's Who of Contemporary Achievement; Men of Achievement 1982; 2000 Outstanding People of the 20th Century 1997, 2000; Who Is Who Magyarországon, 3. kiadás, 2005; Ki kicsoda a magyar oktatásban 2005, 2006.
April 2010