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Zsuzsa Ferge’s name is known to anyone the least concerned with everyday social and political issues. For several decades, Ferge’s position on any important issues of social policy has acquired broad publicity. Her name comes up all the time as a key advocate of the struggle against child poverty, and it would not be far-fetched to say that few people have such a clear understanding of the social situation in Hungary as Ferge.
Ferge has obtained her university degree at the Karl Marx University of Economics, as it was called at the time. Meanwhile, she was working at the department of economics of the Hungarian Central Statistical Office (HCSO) already since 1950. During all this time, she was interested in sociology, statistics and social policy that were her main field of activity. Her first published articles approached statistics from the point of view of social policy.
After 1960 Ferge led the department of social stratification at the HCSO until 1968, when she became the head and a senior research fellow at the Institute of Sociology of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (HAS). For the next eight years, she was the head of, and then professor at, the Department of Sociology and Social Policy of Eötvös University, Budapest. At the same time, she was a visiting lecturer at various foreign universities, and was granted an honorary degree by the University of Edinburgh.
Ferge obtained academic candidate title (CSc.) in 1968, and Ph.D. degree in 1982. She has been a regular member at HAS since 2002. She has been elected as member of various international organizations, including the European Academy and the European Academy of Yuste.
From 2005 to its closure in 2011, Ferge was a lead expert of the Office for the Programmes to Combat Child Poverty. She was awarded several honorary titles, notably the Széchenyi Award, the Pro Urbe Award and the Order of Merit of the Hungarian Republic - Commander Cross, which she received in 2002.
Ferge is now professor Emeritus at Eötvös University, head of the Poverty Research Center of Eötvös University, and chief researcher at the Unit working on the National Program against Child Poverty, located at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.
Ferge has published about 15 books and several hundreds of papers, and created various civil initiatives. It is by no way an exaggeration to say that, to this day, Zsuzsa Ferge is one of the most outstanding and defining figure of Hungarian sociology.
(compiled by András Páldi university student)
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