Viktor's ancestors were proud Rusyn farmers who arrived from Western Ukraine in the village of Görömböly in the eighteenth century. Three of Viktor's grandparents spoke Ruthenian as their first language in childhood. After WWII, similarly to other Rusyn families, their language, traditions, and thus Rusyn culture gradually became assimilated by the surrounding Hungarian majority. Viktor does not speak Rusyn but honors Ruysn ancestors who settled in and loved the lands around the Bükk Mountains.
Since childhood, Viktor has often wondered how humans have changed the mountains and plains around Northeast Hungary and, vice versa, how nature has influenced various ethnic groups living in the area. Viktor's fascination turned into a research stream and numerous publications in this vein.
As a child, Viktor's family, like most living in Hungary's heavily industrialized, grim Borsod Basin, had to get by with little. A minimalist lifestyle and the minimization of resource use via reuse, repair, and recycling thus became a passion for little Viktor in the 1980s. Viktor has taken those minimalist ideas very seriously ever since and developed a second research stream about discards and waste.
1980s: An amazing childhood in a village/suburb on the foothills of the Carpathians.
Early 1990s: Seeing the massive societal destruction caused by post-industrial structural change and the "shock therapy". People were dropping like flies.
1998–2004: Figuring out what “scholar material” meant in Hungarian academia.
2004: Emigrating to Finland.
2004–2006: Pondering about PhD studies while cleaning and washing dishes part-time.
2007–2009: Playing the academic game for the first time.
2009–2013: Leaving academia to get a life.
2015: Completing PhD, University of Tampere, Finland
2016: Becoming a father, and finding the meaning of life.
2017: First monograph book published. (See more: Monograph Book)
2018–2021: First large project funded: Kone Foundation. (See more: Projects)
2019: First edited collection published. (See more: Home page)
2021: Habilitation granted (Associate Professor), Tampere Universities
2022: First scientific paper written that I have been happy with (See more: Scientific Papers) https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/723787
2024–: First research team projects funded as PI and Research Lead at the University of Ostrava. (See more: Projects)
2024-: Co-edited book series with CEU Press: https://ceupress.com/series/environmental-history-central-and-eastern-europe
Copyright © 2024 Viktor Pál - All Rights Reserved.
Powered by GoDaddy