Dr. Barnabas Balint

Professional Background

Barnabas Balint received a PhD in history from Magdalen College, University of Oxford, for his research on Jewish youth experiences during the Holocaust in Hungary. His multi-lingual research (English, French, and Hungarian) combines the history of childhood, gender, and identity to explore the lives of young Jews during the Holocaust. While at Oxford, Dr. Balint taught history and held an associate fellowship at the Higher Education Academy. He also led numerous exchange and public engagement projects, organizing conferences, event series, and interviews. Dr. Balint earned a master's degree from the University of Oxford, where he charted the history of the Jewish Scouts of France during the Holocaust and has been published in Holocaust and Genocide Studies. Beyond academia, he served as a communications officer for the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust and currently chairs their Youth Forum.

Dr. Balint has been awarded several fellowships and research grants, including the 2021-2022 Breslauer, Rutman, and Anderson Research Fellowship at the USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research, a 2022 European Holocaust Research Infrastructure Conny Kristel Fellowship at Yad Vashem,  a 2023-2024 Scouloudi Fellowship at the Institute for Historical Research, School of Advanced Study, University of London, and the Jean Henderson Prize for the Best Academic Performance in European History. 

Fellowship Research

Dr. Balint was awarded the Miles Lerman Center for the Study of Jewish Resistance Research Fellowship for his project, “Reconceptualizing Resistance: Zionist Networks of Rescue and Resistance in Wartime Hungary.” His project seeks to understand the role the Hungarian Zionist Association (Magyarországi Cionista Szövetség, MCSz) played in resistance and rescue during the Holocaust in Hungary. In so doing, it reconceptualizes resistance around pre-existing personal solidarities as opposed to political and national ideologies.

Despite significant academic and public interest, the history of ordinary Jews’ role in resistance to the Holocaust in Hungary has remained in the margins, especially in English-language scholarship. Dr. Balint’s research brings this knowledge from Hungarian to English and places the personal solidarities of Hungarian Jews at the forefront of their history. It approaches resistance from both a macro and a micro perspective, combining the vast national and transnational networks of Zionist movements across Central and Eastern Europe with the local realities of the communities in which their members lived and worked.

This fellowship allows Dr. Balint access to the USHMM’s Jewish community records, central and provincial government documents, family collections, and oral history interviews to reveal how the MCSz built and maintained a human network across Hungary. Drawing on archival research in English-, Hungarian-, and French-language sources, his project promises to contribute to the understanding of Jewish life in Hungary while also suggesting a new way of approaching the history of resistance. 

Residency Period: September 1, 2024–April 30, 2025