Maria Heller

Maria Heller is a sociologist and linguist, former director of the Institute of Sociology at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest. Her research interests include media and communications, theories of the public sphere, discourse analysis and new ICTs.

She published in several languages on the structure of the public sphere; discourse analysis of public debates (national identity, demography, NATO and EU enlargement, globalization, Eurosceptic discourses); discursive strategies of public and private speakers; communication models; symbolic politics and the European public sphere; value analysis of mass culture and commodity aesthetics; the structure of the public sphere in state socialism and in pluralist societies; discursive strategies in advertising; and the sociology of games.

She participated in various international research programmes, among which “Changing Media – Changing Europe” organized by the European Science Foundation and she was a “Freedom of Speech” guest professor at Bergen University in 2006-2007. She is an active member of the Living Memorial, the Virág Teréz research group on multi-generational trauma and the Network of Hungarian Academics.

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