PhD Candidate

Profile

I am a first year MPhil/PhD student (PAIS Scholarship) at the Department of Politics and International Studies.

I hold a BA in International Relations from Corvinus University of Budapest and an Msc in Development Economics from SOAS University of London. During my undergraduate studies, I participated in exchange semesters at University of Bremen, Waseda University in Tokyo, and the University of Jordan in Amman (Campus Mundi, bilateral scholarship), in addition to an Erasmus+ funded research internship in Istanbul.

I am also a proud alumnus of the Széchenyi István College for Advanced Studies (Budapest) where I served as an elected committee member for academic affairs and have completed the Public Policy track. I was the recipient of the 2018 Király Rita Award by the votes of the first-year cohort, as well as the 2021 Patrónus Teacher Award for my contributions to the newly established Global Politics academic programme.

Research

My thesis, which is under the provisional title 'Recharging neighbourhood relations: Development finance and energy transition in the EU’s Southern Neighbourhood', will aim to investigate how energy transition shapes the EU's neighbourhood policies in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. I am more specifically interested in how changes within the development finance field and in the geopolitical dynamics impact the international political economy of energy transition in the region.

My research is supervised by Dr Caroline Kuzemko and Dr Mitya Pearson.

Published works

Piroska, D., & Schlett, B. (2023). Mandate management: a field theory approach to the EBRD’s adaptive practice in Egypt. Review of International Political Economy, 31(1), 47–73. https://doi.org/10.1080/09692290.2023.2169739Link opens in a new window

Conference papers

Piroska, D. & Schlett, B. "Development finance as neighbourhood policy:
The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in Egypt". Presented at the SASE Development Finance in a Changing Global Context Mini-Conference, 4th of July 2021.

Piroska, D. & Schlett, B. "The EBRD in North Africa: Articulating the Financialized Practices of State-led Development Finance". Presented at the ISA Annual Convention 2021, 9th of March 2021.