Dr. habil. Natália Pikli

Biography:

I graduated at Eötvös Loránd University in 1995-96 as a member of Eötvös Collegium, with MA diplomas in English and Hungarian (with teaching degrees), and I pursued my doctoral studies at ELTE under the supervision of Professor István Géher, ending with  a summa cum laude defense in 2003. My doctoral dissertation (The Prism of Laughter. Shakespeare’s ‘very tragical mirth’) was later published in Germany. In 2018 I completed the so-called ‘habilitation’ process at ELTE. My monograph based on the habiliation manuscript was published by Routledge with the title Shakespeare’s Hobby-Horse and Early Modern Popular Culture in 2022. This book won the Book Award Prize of the Hungarian Society for English Studies and the Publication Excellence Prize of Eötvös Loránd University in 2023. My latest book, Shakespeare minden időkre (Shakespeare for All Times) is published by Európa in 2025 and targets the general Hungarian audience.

I worked as a full-time teacher of Hungarian Literature and English as a Foreign Language in Radnóti Miklós Grammar School, Dunakeszi between 1996 and 2008. During this time I was a guest lecturer at ELTE and Eötvös Collegium. I received full tenure at the Department of English Studies, ELTE, in 2008, and have been working here ever since, first as Senior Lecturer, then as Associate Professor.

I received a doctoral grant to do research at the Shakespeare Institute, Stratford-upon-Avon in 1997, and later on I received bursaries for research trips to Cambridge University Library, funded by ESSE in 2013 and by Erasmus in 2019. In 2024 I was granted the Montgomery Gray fellowship at the Newberry Library, Chicago with my research project on early modern women readers and emblem books. The same research was granted the ESSE Bursary for a research trip at the British Library, London in 2025.

Thanks to the staff mobility program of Erasmus, I taught classes at Charles University, Prague, the University of Konstanz, and the University of Florence. I was guest lecturer at the Hungarian University of Theatre and Film Arts, Budapest, between 2016 and 2019. Between 2018 and 2023 I was the President of the Hungarian Shakespeare Committee, of which I was also a founding member in 2013. In October 2020 I was appointed Head of the Doctoral Program “Medieval and Early Modern English Culture and Literature” at ELTE, and currently I am co-leading two research groups: ELTE-CEMS (Centre for Early Modern Studies Research Group) with Andrea Velich and EASPop (English and American Popular Culture Research Group) with Vera Benczik and Lili Zách. I teach classes at the Theatre Studies BA specialization and MA programs at ELTE, on theatre reviewing and the history of European theatre and drama. I publish regularly in English as well as in Hungarian, and also direct amateur theatre productions with grammar school and university students. I write theatre reviews occasionally. I have two children: Dániel (b. 1999) and Panna Szvetlána (b. 2004).

Research:

Early modern (popular) culture and literature, theatre, drama, and cheap print, Shakespeare and his contemporaries. Contemporary (late 20th and 21st century), popular culture, with a focus on the reception of Shakespeare. Contemporary theatre and drama in the UK and in Hungary, Caryl Churchill.

Selected publications:

• Shakespeare minden időkre. Budapest, Európa, 2025.
• “’Mondhatta volna szebben, kis lovag’: Shakespeare és a kortárs magyar újrafordítások.” Studia Litteraria 63: 1-2. (2024) 142-160.
• Shakespeare's Hobby-Horse and Early Modern Popular Culture. New York-Abingdon: Routledge, 2022.
• “Staging the Merchant of Venice in Hungary: Politics, prejudice and languages of hatred”, Boika Sokolova, Janice Valls-Russell (szerk), Shakespeare’s Others in 21st-century European Performance: The Merchant of Venice and Othello. London, Bloomsbury, 2021, 152-170.
• "Institutional heritage and 'that Shakespearean hazard' 1989–2019: The case of the Katona József Theatre and SzFE's Ódry Theatre." Theatralia 24 (2021): 65-82.
• "'Váz-király', 'kapca-, rongykirály' vagy 'bolondkirály'?: Arany János Hamlet-fordításának karneváli rétege." "Eszedbe jussak”: Tanulmányok Arany János Hamlet-fordításáról. Szerk. Paraizs Júlia. Budapest: Reciti Kiadó, 2015. 105-140.

Selected conferences

Teaching

Supervision

Further information