Professor László Csicsmann has been Professor and Head of the Centre for Contemporary Asia Studies at the Corvinus Institute of Advanced Studies, Corvinus University of Budapest, since November 2023. He is also an External Fellow at the Hungarian Institute of International Affairs (HIIA). Previously, he served as Dean of the Kautz Gyula Faculty of Economics and Business at Széchenyi University in Győr (2022–2023). From 2002 to 2022, he held various positions at Corvinus University of Budapest, including Vice-Rector for Academic Affairs (2021–2022), Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences and International Relations (2013–2021), and Director of the Institute of International Studies (2015–2021). Professor Csicsmann earned his PhD in International Relations from the Corvinus University of Budapest. His research focuses on area studies, with particular emphasis on the broader Middle East and South Asia, theories of International Relations and development, and the formation of regional orders. He has twice been awarded the Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of the United States, conducting research at the American Center of Research in Amman in 2007 and 2010. Since then, he has undertaken numerous field visits across the region, from Morocco to Iran.
His special research interests include the foreign policy behaviour of regional states, post-Arab Spring (dis-)order in the Middle East, and the global dynamics shaping the Middle East and South Asia. He has recently published in several Scopus-indexed journals, including the South African Journal of International Affairs, the Journal of the Middle East and Africa, Issues and Studies, and the International Journal of Euro-Mediterranean Studies. He is also the lead editor of The Palgrave Handbook of Geopolitics and Security in the Indo-Pacific (Springer, forthcoming 2025).