Dr Katalin Straner

Teaching

At York St John, I teach across the multidisciplinary programme of the Liberal Arts Foundation Year. In 2025-2026, I teach on the following modules:

• LIB3001M: York in Flux
• LIB3007M: Identity and Otherness: The Self and Society (module lead)
• LIB3008M: Truth and Invention: Culture, Myth and Representation
• LIB3006M: Independent Project (Module Lead)
• LIB3004M: Freedom and Justice
• LIB3005M: Imagining the Future: Environment, Apocalypse and the Digital Revolution

As Lecturer in 20th-Century at Newcastle University, I also teach on the following modules in 2025-2026:

• HIS2300 1968: A Global Moment?
• HIS2317 The Aftermath of War in Europe and Asia (also module convenor)
• HIS3020 Writing History
• HIS3369 Insiders and Outsiders: Migrants, Refugees, and the Making of Modern Europe (module convenor)
• HIS8053 Conflict in European History (MA)
• HIS8069 The Practice of History (MA)

In previous roles, I have also taught modules on the history of the Habsburg Empire and its successor states, the cultural history of war and the Cold War, urban history and culture, the history of science and medicine, and the history of climate change and capitalism, as well as modern English language and literature.

Research

My research interests include knowledge production and science communication in the long nineteenth century, in particular the translation and reception of Darwinism and evolutionary ideas in Central Europe; the role of the city and urban culture in the circulation and transformations of knowledge; migration and exile; and the history of Hungary and the Habsburg Empire in a global and transnational context.

I am currently working on two projects: both aim to understand the way mobility and cultural encounter matter in writing transnational histories of knowledge. In a cultural history of Darwinism in Habsburg Hungary, through a closer reading of the translation and reception of Darwin's and his contemporaries' work, I explore how translation became part of a patriotic agenda - at the same time when publishing, reading, and discussing Darwin and other Western scientific literature also became a form of bourgeois sociability in the Habsburg Empire. More broadly, this work explores the role of local knowledge and empire in knowledge production.
My other project is a history of migration from East Central Europe to Britain since the early 19th century, exploring how the transformation of knowledge, stereotypes, and public debates about migrants, exiles, and refugees, as well as more personal experiences of immigration have shaped Britain's ideas of and relationship with Europe.

I have been awarded research funding from, among others, the European Commission, the British Society for the History of Science, and the American Philosophical Society. I am particularly grateful for the generosity of George Soros, for founding and providing the endowment for the Central European University, where I received a full doctoral fellowship, support for archival research and study abroad, a dissertation write-up grant, and became a historian.

Publications

Journal articles

“How did the Habsburg Empire Survive?” History Today 75, no. 12 (December 2025): 9-10.

“City and Science: The Hungarian Association for the Advancement of Science in Buda, Pest and Budapest, 1841-1896” [in Hungarian] Korall Társadalomtörténeti Folyóirat [Journal for Social History] 19 (2018): 93-113.

“Budapest and Hungarian Transatlantic Migration: Image and Agency in Public Discourse, 1881-1914.” Journal of Migration History 2 (2016): 352-374. doi:10.1163/23519924-00202007

“Natural science in Hungarian of Hungarian natural science? László Dapsy, Hungarian Darwinism, and the origins of the Publishing House of the Hungarian Society of Natural Science” [in Hungarian]. Korall Társadalomtörténeti Folyóirat [Journal for Social History] 16 (2015): 97-115.

“Nomadic Concepts in the History of Biology.” With Jan Surman and Peter Haslinger. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 48, Part C (December 2014): 127–129. doi: 10.1016/j.shpsc.2014.08.001

“‘Nomadic Concepts:’ Biological Concepts and Their Careers Beyond Biology.” With Jan Surman and Peter Haslinger. Contributions to the History of Concepts 9/2 (2014): 1-17. doi: 10.3167/choc.2014.090201

“Science in Hungarian Translation: Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation” [in Hungarian]. Századvég 56 (2010): 97-121.

Book chapters

“Natural Sciences Meeting their Public: The Hungarian Association for the Advancement of Science in Budapest, 1841-1896.” Urban Histories of Science: Making Knowledge in the City. Eds. Oliver Hochadel and Agustí Nieto-Galan, Routledge, 2018. 59-79

 “Wissenschaft im öffentlichen Raum: Die Rezeption des Darwinismus in ungarischen Zeitschriften des 19. Jahrhunderts,” Darwin in Zentraleuropa: Die wissenschaftliche, weltanschauliche und populäre Rezeption im 19. und frühen 20. Jahrhundert. Eds. Herbert Matus and Wolfgang L. Reiter. Ignaz-Lieben-Gesellschaft: Studien zu Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Band 2. Münster: LIT Verlag, 2018. 395-423.

„Wessen Wissenschaft, und in welcher Sprache? Gemeinschaften und Sprachen der Naturwissenschaften in (nicht nur) Budapest 1860er und 1870er Jahre.“ Wandlungen und Brüche: Wissenschaftgeschichte als politische Geschichte. Eds. Johannes Feichtingeret al., Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2018. 221-228.

Edited journal issues

Nomadic Concepts in the History of Biology, with Jan Surman and Peter Haslinger, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 48, Part B (December 2014): 127–184.

Nomadic Concepts: Biological Concepts and Their Careers Beyond Biology, with Jan Surman and Peter Haslinger, Contributions to the History of Concepts 9 (2014): 1-89. 

Book reviews

Jan Surman, Universities in Imperial Austria 1848-1918: A Social History of a Multicultural Space. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2019. Hungarian Historical Review 9 (2020): 573–576.

Mitchell G. Ash and Jan Surman (eds.), The Nationalization of Scientific Knowledge in the Habsburg Empire, 1848-1918. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. Korall Társadalomtörténeti Folyóirat [Journal for Social History] 16: National Science [Nemzeti Tudomány] (2015) no. 62: 237—241.

Conferences

Conferences (as organiser; selection)

2026: The Urbanity of Belonging: Emigres from East Central Europe in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Cities: Main Session, European Association for Urban History, Barcelona. Session co-organiser (with Markian Prokopovych). Forthcoming.

2024: Ukraine and the History of Science. Organiser of a roundtable at the Annual Conference at the Annual Meeting of the British Society for the History of Science, Aberystwyth University.

2022: Cities in (E)motion?  Urban Milieus of Exile, Refuge, and Belonging, Main Session, at Cities in Motion: 15^th Conference on Urban History, European Association for Urban History, Antwerp (with Joachim Schloer). Session organiser/spokesperson.

2022: Across Wor(l)ds: Patterns and Practices of Scientific Travel Writing in Europe and Beyond, Panel at the British Society for the History of Science Annual Conference, Belfast. Session organiser.

2018: Another City: Émigré Intellectuals and Transnational Intellectual Communities in Early Modern and Modern Cities (1500-1950), Main Session, at Urban Renewal and Resilience: 14^th Conference on Urban History, European Association for Urban History, Rome (with Nicholas Mithen). Session spokesperson.

2017: Social Issues for Social Science –Max Weber Fellows’ Annual Conference, European University Institute, Florence. Member of the organising committee.

2017: Translation in Transit: Interpreting Culture in the Modern World. Interdisciplinary Workshop, Max Weber Programme, European University Institute (with Jonathan E. Greenwood). Conference organiser.

2017: British Society for the History of Science Postgraduate Conference, European University Institute, Florence. Member of the local organising committee.

2016: Cities, Science and Satire: Satirical Representations of Urban Modernity and Scientific and Technological Innovation in the Public Space, Specialist Session at Reinterpreting Cities: 13th Conference on Urban History, European Association for Urban History, Helsinki (with Markian Prokopovych).  Session co-convenor.

2014: Science and Satire: Science, Technology and Medicine in the 19th Century Satirical Press, Session at the 6th International Conference of the European Society for the History of Science, Lisbon (with Markian Prokopovych). Session co-convenor.

2012: Nomadic Concepts: Biological Concepts and their Careers Beyond Biology, Herder Institute for the History of East-Central Europe, Marburg (with Jan Surman). Conference co-organiser.

Conference presentations (selection)

2022 “Notes in Motion: An American Naturalist in (Central) Europe”, Panel Across Wor(l)ds: Patterns and Practices of Scientific Travel Writing in Europe and Beyond at the British Society for the History of Science Annual Conference, Belfast.

2022: “Rethinking Europe in Teaching Urban History,” Session “Decolonising Urban History,” International Conference of the European Association for Urban History, University of Antwerp.

2021: “‘From London with Love’: Translation and Authorship in Early Hungarian Evolutionary Literature,” International Conference Translating 18th- and 19th-century Science: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, University of Mainz (forthcoming).

2018: “Science in Exile: Hungarian Émigrés' Routes and Networks of Knowledge Dissemination in Europe, 1849-1868,” International Conference Academic Freedom in Historical Perspective, Central European University, Budapest.

2018: “Science and the Habsburg Imperial Capital City: Karl Vogt in Vienna and Budapest, 1869,” Symposium “Spaces of circulation and colonial/imperial landscapes: criticisms and challenges” at the European Society for the History of Science Biennial Conference in conjunction with the British Society for the History of Science.

2018: “Evolution and Nation in the Press: The Hungarian Reception of Darwinism before and after the Ausgleich (1859−1875),” Secularities. Freethinkers in the Context of National Movements and the Rise of Nation States in Europe, 1789−1920s, International Conference, German Historical Institute, Rome.

2017: “Scientific Societies and Networks between Habsburg Cities,” Science in the Metropolis: Habsburg Vienna in Transnational Context 1848-1918, International and Interdisciplinary Conference sponsored by the Project Group “Wissenschaft und Metropole” of the Commission for History and Philosophy of Science, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna.

2017: “Science in Urban Space: The Reception of Darwinism in 19th-century Hungarian Periodicals and the Popular Press,” Ignaz Lieben Gesellschaft Symposium, Vienna.

2017: “Science in Exile: Natural History and the Hungarian Emigration Network in Correspondence, 1849-1869,” 25th International Congress of History of Science and Technology (ICHST), Rio de Janeiro.

2017: “My Work Called The Origin of Species: Translation, Authorship, and Agency in Early Hungarian Darwinism,” international Conference Translation in Science, Science in Translation, University of Gießen.

2016: “The Hungarian Translation and Reception of David Page's Introductory Textbook of Geology,” 7^th International Conference of the European Society for the History of Science, Prague.

2016: “Science and power, science as power? Scientists and the city in 19th-century Hungary,” Powers of the City: New Approaches to Governance and Rule in Urban Europe since 1500, Centre for Metropolitan History, Institute of Historical Research, School of Advanced Study (University of London).

2015: “Science and Cities in the Habsburg Empire: The Circulation of Knowledge and the Use of Urban Space at the Meetings of the Hungarian Association for the Advancement of Science, 1841-1914,” Wissenschaft und Imperium im östlichen Europa im „langen 19. Jahrhundert“ [Science and Empire in Eastern Europe in the “long nineteenth century”].

2015: “Scientific Knowledge and Urban Public at the Meetings of the Hungarian Association for the Advancement of Science between 1863 and 1893,” Session “Knowledge, Associations and Urban Space in the Nineteenth Century,” Urban History Group, University of Wolverhampton.

2014: “Concepts of ‘Race’ in Early Hungarian Darwinism,” The History of Science, Race and Empire in Central and Eastern Europe, International Workshop, CEU, Budapest.

2014: “Scientists, Public Image and Satire in 19th Century Central Europe,” 6th International Conference of the European Society for the History of Science, Lisbon.

2014: “Budapest and Hungarian Transatlantic Migration: Image and Agency in Public Discourse, 1881-1914,” Session “Cities en Route: Central European Cities and Overseas Migration in the Nineteenth and the Early Twentieth Century” at the European Social Science History Conference, University of Vienna.

2014: “Scientific Lecturing and the Urban Public: Languages and Cultures of the Natural Sciences in Late-19th Century Budapest,” Urban Space and Multilingualism in the Late Habsburg Empire, International Conference, Institute for East European History, University of Vienna.

2012: “Monkeys, Magyars and Men of Science: The Carl Vogt Lectures in Pest,” 5th International Conference of the European Society for the History of Science, Athens.

2012: “Darwin in Budapest: People, Institutions, and Networks in the 1870s,” International Workshop Darwin in Cities, 1859-1930, University of Bochum.

2010: “Darwin in Budapest and Beyond: Decentralising the Reception of Darwinism in Hungary,” 4th International Conference of the European Society for the History of Science, Barcelona.

2010: “Darwin and Literary Culture in Late-19th Century Hungary,” The Cultural Impact of Darwin and Darwinism in Europe, Clare Hall, University of Cambridge.

2009: “Science in Hungarian Translation: The Case of the Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation in Hungary (1858),” British Society for the History of Science Postgraduate Conference, University of Manchester.

2009: “Translating Darwin: Reception in 19th Century Hungary,” The Reception of Darwinism: Trans-Cultural Differences, Boston Colloquium for Philosophy of Science, Boston University.

2008: “Darwin in Hungarian: Challenges of Interpretation in 19th Century Hungary,” Darwin Industries, Inc. – Getting In Gear for 2009, University of Aarhus, Denmark.

Professional activities

I have been Council Member of the British Society for the History of Science since 2023, and have been on the selection committee for the BSHS Pickstone Prize, which is awarded every two years to the best scholarly book in the history of science (broadly construed) in English, twice, in 2024 and 2026. Between 2016 and 2024 I was an elected member of the International Committee of the European Association of European History and was Reviews Editor of the journal Jewish Culture and History from 2019 to 2023.

I have been a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy since 2023.