'Gellner at 100': Nationalism Studies Reunion Conference Celebrating Legacy, Scholarship, and Community

Budapest, Hungary | September 26–28, 2025

This September, the Nationalism Studies community gathered in Budapest for the Nationalism Studies Reunion Conference, marking a unique moment of reflection, dialogue, and celebration. The event commemorated the hundredth anniversary of Ernest Gellner’s birth and the thirtieth anniversary of his death, honoring the intellectual figure whose ideas and legacy inspired the foundation of the program itself.

The conference brought together graduates, faculty members, and leading scholars from around the world, many of whom are now prominent voices in the study of nationalism to present their current work and engage in discussions on nationalism, identity, and contemporary social change.

The sessions featured engaging debates, diverse perspectives, and lively exchanges between alumni and faculty, reaffirming the intellectual vitality that has characterized the Nationalism Studies Program since its inception.

Below, we share reflections from Professor Rogers Brubaker who offers a deeply personal account of the event and its historical significance.

Reflections from Rogers Brubaker

It was a great pleasure to be able to organize a Nationalism Studies Reunion Conference in Budapest in September to mark the hundredth anniversary of Ernest Gellner’s birth and the thirtieth anniversary of his death. Gellner’s death in 1995 was the catalyst for the birth of the Nationalism Studies program. And in an odd and unfortunate coincidence, the centenary of Gellner’s birth turned out to be the year that marked the demise of Nationalism Studies as an independent unit at CEU. That the program should disappear at a moment when nationalism and related issues are more salient than ever in Europe and elsewhere is of course a bitter irony. But the conference provided an occasion to celebrate the remarkable successes of the program.

In the course of nearly 30 years, about 600 students from more than 60 countries have graduated from the program. A remarkable number of these have gone on to PhD programs in a range of disciplines and institutions, and many of these have themselves done interesting work in nationalism studies and adjacent fields. This is true not only of those who presented their work at the conference but of many more: if we had had the time and resources, we could easily have invited several dozen more graduates to present their work. And apart from those working in academia, we could have invited dozens more who continue to grapple with nationalism-related issues in their work in government or NGO positions or as journalists or filmmakers.

 I’ll say a few words about Gellner’s connection to nationalism studies at CEU, since recent students may not be aware of this. In 1990, Gellner became involved in planning the establishment of the CEU as a multi-city university with campuses in Prague, Warsaw, and Budapest. He played a key role in establishing the sociology department in Prague, which began its operations in 1991. Gellner retired from Cambridge in 1993 and was based thereafter in Prague, the city in which he had grown up, and to which he was delighted to return. The previous year, in 1992, Gellner was able to set up a Center for the Study of Nationalism in Prague under CEU auspices, and this became the major focus of his activities. The Center was not itself a teaching unit; as a research center, it hosted visitors and organized a series of conferences. But in the fall of 1995, it welcomed its first group of pre-doctoral students as affiliates of the center, including our conference’s keynote speaker, Siniša Malešević, as well as Gordana Uzelac, who also participated in our conference. The predoctoral students had completed their MAs at CEU and had been accepted into a PhD program that was just getting off the ground. The students were living in the same building where Gellner had his rooms, and according to John Hall’s wonderful intellectual biography of Gellner, he took pleasure in informal encounters and conversations with the students – although Siniša, according to John’s book, did find it a bit disconcerting when Gellner sat down to watch television with him, saying it was as if Max Weber had dropped by.

Gellner died suddenly of a heart attack in early November 1995. The following spring, I was part of a small group convened by Rector Al Stepan to consider how CEU might carry forward Gellner’s legacy – and particularly his unrivaled contributions to the study of nationalism. The university decided to establish a nationalism studies program, and the first students arrived in the fall of 1997, an extraordinary cohort that included Balázs Trencsényi, Oksana Sarkisova, Markian Prokopovych, and Ruxandra Trandafoiu, all of whom participated in the conference.

I had the pleasure and privilege of teaching for a week or occasionally two weeks in the program almost every year since then. I am immensely grateful for the opportunity this gave me to meet such an extraordinary set of interesting, talented, and often brilliant students, pursuing such a wide range of fascinating MA projects. This engagement with the program was a high point of my career, and it remained intellectually and personally gratifying even as my own research interests shifted away from nationalism in the last two decades.

The conference was long in the making. I first proposed the idea fifteen years ago to Mária Kovács, the founding director and presiding spirit of the program for nearly a quarter century until her untimely death in 2020. Mari was enthusiastic, but for a variety of reasons, it didn’t work out at the time. But the idea wouldn’t go away, and I’m thrilled that it finally came to fruition. It was lovely to gather in Budapest for such interesting presentations and engaging discussion with graduates from cohorts spanning more than two decades. Thanks to all who participated! And a special thanks to Szabolcs for co-organizing the conference and to Arin Agich, herself a Nationalism Studies graduate, for her crucial work as conference coordinator.