Sarolta Klenjánszky studied humanities and social sciences at the University of Geneva and at Lyon Lumière University, from which she gained a BA in History and a BA in Sociology. After a Master’s in contemporary history at Paris Nanterre University, she earned her PhD degree from Sciences Po Paris and from Eötvös Lóránd University in Budapest in 2013. She has a particular interest in the comparative and transnational dimensions of the recent history of East-Central Europe. Her research focuses on the communist era, chronologically speaking, and on the links established with the “external world” (Western Europe and the American continent) in terms of geographical scope. Her theoretical interest mainly concerns the intersection between international relations and social history. She explored this topic in her thesis through an analysis of the political and cultural relations that unfolded between the Hungarian communist one-party regime and the principal French parties of the Left, the communist and the socialist ones, during the Cold War, on three distinctive levels: those of the leadership, the intellectuals and the mass organizations. She was a post-doctoral fellow at the Centre Marc Bloch in Berlin for three months in 2013/2014.
She published “L’impact de la révolution hongroise de 1956 et de sa répression sur le mouvement communiste en France” (Communisme. Revue du centre d’étude d’histoire et de sociologie du communisme, nº 88/89, 2006). Her recent works include “Világ fiataljai egyesüljetek”. Az 1949-es budapesti Világifjúsági Találkozó és francia fiatalok részvétele a fesztiválon történeti kontextusban [“Young people of the world, unite!”. The World Youth Festival held in 1949 in Budapest and the French attendance at the festival in the historical context] (Múltunk, 2016/1) and “Between ideology and pragmatism: The Hungarian Socialist Workers Party’s relations to the French Communist Party in the aftermath of the Czechoslovak Crisis (1968-1973)” (manuscript).