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PoltextLAB is a host institution in the Hungarian Academy of Sciences’ (MTA) Momentum MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowship Programme, through which we welcome applications for our V-SHIFT project. The programme supports 16-18 exceptional postdoctoral researchers, offering them the opportunity to work within Hungarian Momentum (Lendület) research groups. This initiative fosters career development in dynamic research environments while enhancing the international visibility of Momentum projects. Additionally, it strengthens Hungary’s R&D and innovation ecosystem and promotes interdisciplinary collaboration across disciplines and sectors. Our research team offers postdoctoral researchers joining the programme the opportunity to use state-of-the-art AI-based methods to investigate the emergence of global powers on the domestic policy agenda of the V4 countries and to analyse attitudes and changes in attitudes towards them. The fellowship lasts up to 36 months. The first round of applications opens on 1 December 2025. Our research team will host postdoctoral researchers until August 2028. Further details can be found here: https://momentummsca.mta.hu/application Source: https://www.facebook.com/MomentumMSCA

On 21 November 2025, Miklós Sebők took part in a panel discussion at the Magyar Hang event space in Budapest during the session How Does AI Transform the Press and Reality?, held as part of the event “Reality, Freedom, Responsibility – Why Does Independent Press Matter?”.

Ádám Kerényi, researcher at the V-Shift Momentum research group, presented at the international conference “High-quality Development of the Belt and Road Initiative: Concepts and Actions” in Beijing on 17–19 November.In his talk, “The Emergence of the Digital Silk Road – Case Study from Budapest”, he highlighted global trends in central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), China’s leading role with the e-CNY, and the growing use of digital currencies in cross-border trade and BRI cooperation. He also presented the Hungarian case, noting the rapid expansion of RMB clearing in Budapest and Hungary’s increasing integration into China’s digital financial ecosystem.

On 13 November 2025, Martin Bánóczy delivered a lecture at the HUN-REN Centre in Budapest as part of the “HUN-REN Cloud Meetup”. His presentation, titled Optimising the Fine-Tuning of Large Language Models, addressed key challenges in computational social science, with a focus on improving the efficiency of text classification tasks. He outlined the limitations of manual coding and presented machine-learning-based solutions developed within the Babel Machine project. Bánóczy discussed three major classification tasks: the Comparative Agendas Project, its extension using an enhanced codebook for media analysis, and a further expansion incorporating media-specific coding schemes. He examined factors affecting model performance and highlighted obstacles that complicate multilingual fine-tuning processes.

A new study by Miklós Sebők, Áron Buzogány, Julia Fleischer, Theresa Gessler, Anna Takács, Sean M. Theriault and Ákos Holányi, titled “Crisis-exploitation or fear-mongering? A research agenda for the comparative study of policy crises and illiberal policy frames”, has been published in Journal of European Public Policy. The paper examines how legislative politicians in Austria, Germany, Hungary and the United States use policy crises (migration and COVID-19) to advance illiberal policy frames (IPFs). Their key finding is that the use of these illiberal frames does not closely track objective crisis metrics (such as asylum seeker numbers or COVID casualties), suggesting that the narrative strategy is one of sustained fear-mongering rather than opportunistic crisis-exploitation. The authors operationalise IPFs via a novel codebook and large-language-model text-analysis across four countries and two issues, offering a systematic research agenda for studying illiberal policy-framing. The full study is available here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13501763.2025.2583176  Sebők, M., Buzogány, Á., Fleischer, J., Gessler, T., Takács, A., Theriault, S. M. & Holányi, Á. (2025) Crisis-Exploitation or Fear-Mongering? A Research Agenda for the Comparative Study of Policy Crises and Illiberal Policy Frames, Journal of European Public Policy. DOI: 10.1080/13501763.2025.2583176.

On 11 November 2025, Miklós Sebők delivered a lecture at University of Kentucky as part of the 2025 Fall Seminar Series. His presentation, titled Using AI Assistants in Comparative Research: The Case of the Comparative Agendas Project and the Babel Machine, introduced new AI-driven tools developed by poltextLAB to support large-scale political text classification. Sebők outlined a fine-tuning agent that enables researchers to adapt multilingual transformer models through natural-language instructions in Slack, automating validation, data strategy selection, and GPU-based training processes. He also presented RobotAssistant, a multi-model comparison framework that deploys classification tasks simultaneously across systems such as Claude, GPT, and DeepSeek. Together, these innovations aim to democratise gold-standard machine coding and reduce technical barriers in comparative political research.  Further details of the event can be found here: https://martin.uky.edu/events/seminar-miklos-sebok

On 10 November 2025, Miklós Sebők delivered a workshop titled Generative AI for Researchers — Tips and Tricks at the University of Kentucky’s Martin School of Public Policy and Administration as part of the 2025 Fall Seminar Series. The session introduced participants to the concepts, tools, and research applications of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), exploring both introductory and advanced topics. Sebők discussed the ethical and responsible use of GenAI, demonstrated QuantiCheck — a custom GPT designed for peer review — and presented prompt-based methods for literature searches, classification, and regression. He also compared local and API-based models, highlighting how GenAI can be integrated with R and Python, and showcased the role of AI agents in automating data collection and classification. Further details of the event can be found here: https://martin.uky.edu/events/workshop-miklos-sebok