COMMUNICATION

The Board of Trustees and the staff of the European and Ibero-American Academy of Yuste Foundation regret the passing of Hungarian sociologist Zsuzsa Ferge, a member of the European and Ibero-American Academy of Yuste. Ferge assumed the John Maynard Keynes chair during the ceremony of the Carlos V European Award, which was delivered to Jorge Sampaio on October 13^th, 2004. (9/04/2024)

Zsuzsanna Sandorné Ferge was born in Budapest in 1931. An economist, she worked in the field of social statistics, sociology, and social policy, becoming a professor of Sociology at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest in 1988. She founded Hungary’s first department of Social Policy in 1989. She was a professor emerita at Eötvös University, director of the Poverty Research Centre at Eötvös University, and chief researcher of the unit working on the National Programme against Child Poverty, located at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

In addition to poverty, her main research area was the study of social structure, social inequalities, and integration disorders. She was a visiting professor at various French, English, and American universities. She published over three hundred studies, collecting the results of her research in more than a dozen books.

An honorary doctorate recipient from the University of Edinburgh, she was a member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, a corresponding member of the European Academy, and an honorary member of the Széchenyi Academy of Literature and Arts.

As a result of her activities, she received the Széchenyi Prize, the Pro Urbe Budapest Prize, the Miklós Radnóti Prize, the Prima Prize, and the Imre Nagy Prize. In 2002, she was awarded the Middle Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Hungary. In 2009, she became an honorary citizen of Budapest. In 2011, she received the Bouquet of Appreciation from UNICEF and the European Citizen’s Prize. In 2017, she was awarded the Mensch Prize from the Mensch International Foundation.

Zsuzsa Ferge was closely related to the European and Ibero-American Academy of Yuste Foundation. Among other activities, she served as a jury member for the Carlos V European Award in 2006, 2008, and 2017; she published articles in several publications of Yuste Foundation including “Is There a Specific East-Central European Welfare Culture?” in Yuste Dossiers No. 5-6 – 2007 (Globalisation); “Hungary and the Goals of the European Union” in the Academy’s newsletter (04/2020); and she participated in the Declaration of the European Academy of Yuste “The Future of Europe: The Citizens’ and Social Europe”, approved in Yuste in June 2006. Additionally, she attended the 2006 Carlos V European Award, which was delivered to Helmut Kohl.