Miklós Sebők, as head of the MTA-ELTE TK V-SHIFT Lendület Research Group, was a guest on KlubRádió’s morning show “Reggeli gyors” (Morning Express). During the half-hour-plus conversation, the main topic was current domestic and foreign policy developments in the United States.
Miklós Sebők, as head of the MTA-ELTE TK V-SHIFT Lendület Research Group, was a guest on Tilos Rádió’s show “Régen minden jobb volt”. During the hour-long discussion participants analyzed recent developments in the United States from a domestic and foreign policy angle.
On 2 October 2025, guest researcher Nathalie Neptune gave a workshop at poltextLAB on how satellite data can be combined with legal and policy information to study forest management and wildfire control in Hungary. She demonstrated how changes in forest laws — such as those governing harvesting rules, conservation, or emergency logging — can be linked to satellite indicators, including forest loss, burned area, and vegetation health. This approach helps reveal whether and when new policies have had visible effects on Hungary’s forests. The project employs advanced statistical methods, including interrupted time-series analysis, regression models, and Bayesian structural time-series (BSTS) models, as well as case studies. These methods test whether legislative changes correspond to measurable shifts in forest conditions or wildfire frequency, offering evidence to support more adaptive and data-driven forestry and fire management strategies. The Hungarian Academy of Sciences Distinguished Guest Scientists Fellowship Programme supports this research.
Miklós Sebők and Csaba Molnár gave a successful presentation at this year’s Comparative Agendas Project General Conference in Konstanz, Germany, where they received highly positive feedback. Additionally, Miklós Sebők showcased the latest features and models of the Babel Machine during a plenary session, highlighting its newest capabilities for classifying documents into specific public policy subtopics.
On May 30, 2025, Anna Takács gave a presentation titled “Crisis-Exploitation, Sticky Narratives or Fear-Mongering? A Research Agenda for the Comparative Study of Policy Crises and Illiberal Policy Frames” at the HUN-REN Centre for Social Sciences, as part of the 30th Annual Conference of the Hungarian Political Science Association. Her talk was delivered in the panel “In the Shadow of Algorithms: Political Science in the Age of AI.” The presented paper examines the illiberal framing in parliamentary speeches on immigration and the COVID-19 pandemic in Austria, Germany, Hungary, and the United States.
On 13 May 2025, Miklós Sebők gave a lecture at the HUN-REN BTK Institute of Philosophy titled How Can Generative Artificial Intelligence Be Used in Social Science Research? A Methodological Overview with Examples from Political Philosophy. The talk was part of the “AI? Philosophical Questions about Artificial Intelligence” seminar series. Drawing on the Prompt Revolution methodological blog, Dr. Sebők introduced current generative AI tools used in social science and philosophical research. He covered the entire research cycle, from topic selection and literature review to qualitative data processing. Further details of the event can be found HERE.
On 2 April 2025, Orsolya Ring delivered a lecture at the Central European University (CEU) as part of the Borderless Knowledge: What Can AI Offer to Science? (“Határtalan tudás: Mit adhat az AI a tudománynak?”) event. In her presentation, she explored how artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming academic research, with a particular focus on its role in big data-driven studies — especially in processing the textual data widely used in the Social Sciences. Drawing on illustrative examples, she demonstrated how large language models can support the automated analysis of news media and help identify underlying patterns within it. She underscored that AI not only enhances the efficiency of scholarly work but also introduces new perspectives to empirical research. Further details of the event can be found here.
Miklós Sebők gave a presentation on Artificial Intelligence in University Education and Scientific Research. He focused on the applications of generative AI in education and research, particularly in plagiarism detection, classification tasks, and the modernization of student reporting and assessment.
The Methods Workshop on Large Language Models and Generative AI: Advancing Policy Frame and Media Narrative Analysis took place on February 14, 2025, in Prague, organized by poltextLAB, with the support of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (MTA) and the International Visegrad Fund. The aim of the workshop was to present the latest research findings and foster scientific dialogue on the application of artificial intelligence in the social sciences. The program featured presentations on topics such as political information flows, sentiment analysis of parliamentary speeches, and the use of generative AI in policy frame analysis. The pictures from the workshop are available here.
On 13 February 2025, Rebeka Kiss delivered a presentation at the “Legal Remedies for Flawed Legislative Procedures” workshop, organised under the auspices of the Institute of Legal Studies of the HUN-REN CSS and the Union of Attorneys for Democracy and the Rule of Law. Her presentation focused on poltextLAB’s research on legislative quality, with particular emphasis on legislative backsliding, the prevalence of legislative basket cases, and the implications of tailor-made laws. The workshop focused on identifying irregularities in parliamentary lawmaking and assessing the legal mechanisms available for their remedy, with particular attention to the role of the Constitutional Court and judicial review. The event also included expert-led roundtable discussions on constitutional challenges in the legislative process and the role of the legal profession and attorneys in the legislative process.The program is available here.