Seven New Honorary Doctors of UP Inaugurated

Seven internationally renowned honorary doctors of the University of Pécs have been inaugurated at the Ceremonial Senate Meeting on 4 November at the dr. Halasy-Nagy Lecture Hall. They are prominent, respected professors, who have been actively working in close cooperation with the University of Pécs. Through their professional achievements on their respective fields as well as in the joint research projects with the faculties of the University they have greatly benefited the University of Pécs as well as Hungarian science. They all have given their inaugural adresses at the repective promoting faculties, which they have summarized at the Ceremonial Senate Meeting. 

"Today, we inaugurate honorary doctors, prominent, internationally recognized scholars who, beside their achievements, have helped the work of the University of Pécs for a longer time. They participate in our joint research projects; they welcome our doctoral students and they visit UP to teach" - said rector Attila Miseta in his welcome speech at the ceremony. At the festive occasion organized honouring the Day of Hungarian Science (3 November), habilitation degrees have also been conferred. Since 1994, more than a thousand habilitations have taken place, where many excellent scholars, who have become illustrious professors later, have delivered their professional lectures in Hungarian and in foreign languages. Celebrating those, who have served our university for decades, deserving the Professor Emeritus title. For years of excellent educational and teaching the Medal of the Pedagogical Service has also been conferred.

"It is a pleasure to see diversity and generational continuity together, based on which science, education and practice form our world, supplementing, supporting each other! We wish you further professional success for this!"

- highlighted the rector of the University of Pécs.

New Honorary Doctors of the University of Pécs

Dr. Monika Schlachter

Monika Schlachter is a German professor of law, she has been a member of the European Council’s body, the “European Committee of Social Rights” since 2007, currently she is its vice president. She is the director of the “Institut für Arbeitsrecht und Arbeitsbeziehungen in der Europäischen Union” (IAAEU), which is the most important labour law scientific collection in Europe for the time being. In the 1992/1993 academic year she worked at the Department of Labour Law of the University of Freiburg. From 1993 to 2006 she was a professor of the reorganized University of Jena, the Faculty of Law, Department of Civil Law, Labour Law, International Private Law and Comparative Jurisprudence. In 2006, she was invited to the Department of Labour Law and Civil Law of the University of Regensburg, where she worked until 2008. While she acted as a professor of law, she held many positions at the certain faculties of law (dean, deputy dean, senator, a member of the research committee, dean for research). At the University of Jena, she was the leader of the LL.M. programme of the University of Sydney. She is one of the elaborators and participants of the European LL.M. programme of the University of Sevilla. Prof. Monika Schlachter was appointed to the Department of International and European Labour Law and Civil Law of the University of Trier in 2008. In the last decade, she provided opportunity for continuous and regular research to the current and former employees of the Department of Labour Law and Social Insurance of the University of Pécs, she established fruitful scientific co-operation between the Faculty’s Department of Labour Law and Social Insurance and the employees of the Research Group of Comparative and European Employment Policy and Labour Law of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences – University of Pécs.

Dr. Zoran Pavlović

Zoran Pavlović is a professor of criminal law at the University of Economics and Law of Novi Sad, Faculty of Law, he is the provincial ombudsman of the Vojvodina Autonomous Province. He is an internationally recognized professor, authority of criminal law. In 2019, he received recognition as a Honoris Causa professor at the Chinese Southeast University Law School. He is regularly invited to give lectures in China and in many countries of Europe. He regularly delivers lectures at the Faculty of Political Science and Law of the University of Pécs, he participates in international conferences. In addition to this, in the spring of 2020, he made a proposal to the Faculty’s dean for the elaboration of a mutual international training programme. Together with the leader of the Department of Criminal Law of the University of Pécs, Faculty of Law, he is the editor in chief of the Journal of Eastern European Criminal Law, the C category international professional journal of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, which is jointly published by the University of Pécs, Faculty of Law and the Faculty of Law of the University of Timisoara twice a year, in Bucharest. He works as the provincial ombudsman of Vojvodina as well, inter alia, the enforcement of the rights of the Hungarian minority of Vojvodina belongs to him.

Dr. Jacques Demotes-Mainard

Jacques Demotes-Mainard was born in 1956 in France. He obtained medical qualification, then he passed a professional examination as a neurologist. He is the professor of cell biology and neurobiology. He has spent a longer period in the United Stated with research. From 2001 to 2007 he was the leader of the clinical research organization of the INSERM, then in 2014 he was elected to be the general director of the ECRIN. He has held this position since then, thus he is the head of the most important clinical research infrastructure of the European Union. Within the work organization of the ECRIN, Dr. Jacques Demotes-Mainard especially supported the Hungarian member organization of the ECRIN (HECRIN Consortium) in becoming a full member of the ECRIN and the Hungarian centre of the HECRIN Consortium in being taken to the University of Pécs. He supported the implementation of the Erasmus+ program managed by the HECRIN Consortium and the University of Pécs with the participation of French, Irish, Portuguese and Czech universities. He provided international support for the EFOP programme compiled by the University of Pécs, University of Debrecen and University of Szeged, he undertook to make the expansive international communication channels of the ECRIN available to the HECRIN Consortium and the University of Pécs if the COST (Cooperation in Science and Technology) tender submitted by the University of Pécs wins support in 2020. He was for the organization of the “International Clinical Trial’s Day”, the most important forum of the clinical researches, at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences by the HECRIN Consortium and the University of Pécs in 2018. He takes part in the work of the International Consulting Body of the Szentágothai János Research Centre thus he regularly visits to Pécs.

Dr. Dmitri Anatolyevich Funk

Dmitri Anatolyevich Funk is an ethnographer, cultural anthropologist, at the present time he is the director of the Institute of Anthropology and Ethnography of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He is a prominent, determinant person of the Russian ethnographical life who, due to his career as a scientist and as an institution manager, was a motor of the renewal of Russian researches and their involvement in the mainstream of the international researches. Dmitri Anatolyevich Funk professor has an outstanding role in the reformation of the Russian Siberian researches and of ethnography, the life of the cultural anthropological institutions in general. He has been in close relationship with the Hungarian scientific life for decades.  His connections with the Department of Ethnography – Cultural Anthropology of the University of Pécs are especially fruitful. In the spring of 2009, he participated in the department’s Marie Curie tender (“From Hungarian Ethnography to European Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology”), within the framework of which he held 2 courses: “Native folks of South-Siberia: ethnohistory, culture and dynamics of changes” and “Introduction to the Turkish epic tradition”. Dmitri Anatolyevich Funk plays the role of a bridge between the national, within it that of Pécs, and the Russian ethnography: he regularly appears in publications in Hungarian and he publishes Hungarian publications in Russian language.

Dr. Vicki L. Golich

Dr. Vicki L. Golich, who is Provost and Executive Vice President of Academic Affairs at the Metropolitan State University of Denver, has been a key player in strategic planning of joint projects of the MSU Denver and the University of Pécs. As an outstanding expert in international relations, she has contributed significantly to the development of close collaboration and continues to be actively involved in maintaining this relationship. The result of her ongoing efforts is a professional cooperation between the two universities, covering both teaching and research activities. Dr. Vicki L. Golich became Executive Vice President at MSU Denver in 2009 and is a professor of the Department of Political Science. Before that, she had climbed the academic ladder at California State University San Marcos (CSUSM) and became a professor in 1998. She was interim dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at CSUSM, than was elected dean from 2004 through 2009. Her main field of studies has been international and diplomatic relations. During her undergraduate studies, she spent 18 months at Universität des Saarbrücken in West Germany, studying Political Science and International Relations. She earned her Master’s Degree at California State University, Fullerton in International Relations Theory and Comparative Politics. In 1984, she received her Ph.D. at University of Southern California with emphases in International Political Economy, International Relations Theory, and Comparative Politics. Dr. Golich has an extraordinary passion for education and is a renowned expert in the field, conducting many teaching workshops around the world, combining interactive teaching models with her own research. She writes about her research field as sensible as about education. It is evident from her curriculum vitae that, besides teaching and research, she is also an experienced leader, who managed many important projects successfully. As a result of her proactive participation, financial support became available for joint projects of the MSU Denver and the UP, thus enabling our lecturers to gain access to more research and teaching opportunities.

Dr. Michael Kilchling

The name of Dr. Michael Kilchling, the senior researcher of the Max-Planck-Institut seated in Freiburg “agglutinated” with the scientific co-operations that have been in existence between the Faculty of Law of the University of Pécs and the Institution since the beginning of the 2000s. Michael Kilchling has regularly given lectures for 14 years at the international scientific symposiums named “Kriminologischer Sommerkurs” started at the initiation of László Korinek academician and organized at the Faculty of Law of the University of Pécs with criminological and criminal law topics and he rendered serious professional assistance for the strengthening of the international scientific reputation of the criminalists teaching at the Faculty of Law. He supported the research of several professors of the Faculty of Law in the biggest criminal research workshop in the world, at the Max-Planck-Institut für ausländisches und internationales Strafrecht and the winning of the Max-Planck-Stipendium. His research area covers almost every issue of criminology and criminal law, considered relevant and current by the international scientific community, such as fighting against money laundering and terrorism, typology of organized crime, handling the especially dangerous criminals etc. He is one of the most well-known international authorities of the science of criminology and victimology.

Erik Slooten

In January 2018, Erik Slooten arrived at the head of IT Services Hungary Kft./ Deutsche Telekom IT Solutions with nearly 20 years of senior management experience acquired in an international environment. He had worked at several global, market-leader mobile and ICT companies in regional positions, including in Slovakia with Slovak Telekom, the Czech Republic with GTS and T-Mobile, and Bulgaria with Vivacom. From August 2019, alongside his leadership of ITSH, he also undertook the global management of Public Cloud Service division at T-Systems International. His career is hallmarked by the introduction and transformation of major IT systems. In the course of his work he has achieved significant results, not only in the area of IT, but B2B sales, marketing and business development, too. As a manager committed to innovation, he is associated with several solutions introduced at international level. Beside technological innovations, he considers creating the possibility for the development of children for whom this opportunity is not available due to their social situation especially important. Accordingly, he initiated an educational programme where now more than 70 disadvantaged children are learning programming in Szendrőlád and Pécs.

Awards and Habilitations

Commemorative Medal for Education

• Ágnes Mária Kovács-Angyal, P.E. teacher
• Erika Priskin-Rizner, history teacher
• Orsolya Szemes-Barnóczky, literature teacher
• Éva Zsuzsanna Újhelyi, English teacher

Professor Emeritus title

• Prof. Dr. János Kállai, Professor of the Medical School

Honorary University Professor title

• Dr. László Gergely Nőt, Head of Department of the Teaching Hospital of János Balassa in Tolna County

Honorary Associate Professor title

• Dr. Fariborz Bagheri, Senior Consultant Urologist, Head of Urology Department, Dubai Hospital
• Zsolt Eördögh, Executive Director of Mecsekterv Ltd.
• Dr. András Jóri, lawyer
• Dr. Borbála Mikos, Medical director of Bethesda Children’s Hospital
• Dr. Balázs Sipos, Leader of the Administrative Chamber of the Court of Pécs
• Dr. József Stojanovics, Senior associate professor, retired

Habilitations

In the field of biology:

• Győző Horváth, assistant professor of the Faculty of Sciences
• István Karsai, assistant professor of the Medical School

In the field of health sciences:

• István Ágoston, assistant professor of the Faculty of Health Sciences
• Tamás De Jonge, head of department of the Markusovszky University Teaching Hospital in Szombathely
• Éva Kovács, college professor of Semmelweis University
• Tamás Laczkó, assistant professor of the Faculty of Health Sciences

In the field of theoretical medicine:

• Kata Bölcskei, assistant professor of the Medical School
• Antal Tamás Zemplényi, assistant professor of the Faculty of Pharmacy

In the field of philosophy:

• Mihály Héder, associate professor of the Budapest University of Technology and Economics
• Mátyás Szalay, director of Edith Stein Institute of Philosophy, Granada, Spain
• Ádám Tamás Tuboly, leader of the Lendület Morality and Science Research Group of Hungarian Academy of Sciences

In the field of physics:

• György Tóth, assistant professor of the Faculty of Sciences

In the field of fine arts:

• András Ernszt, assistant professor of the Faculty of Music and Visual Arts
• Péter Menasági, assistant professor of the Hungarian University of Fine Arts