Négyesi Mária

Since 1981 Dr. Mária Négyesi (1953–) has been teaching at the Department, being Head of Department from 2001 till 2018. She obtained her PhD degree in Hindi literature from Agra University in 1997. Her special field is Hindi linguistics and literature. She has translated several Hindi short stories into Hungarian and vice versa. Formerly she taught Latin and Ancient Greek, and studied aspects of Sanskrit lyrical poetry. She reorganised the Hindi syllabus, and introduced new teaching methods that have proved very successful. In collaboration with Dr. Asghar Wajahat, she prepared a new textbook for university students of Hindi. It was published in 2013 in India. Its next edition will be the first commercially available course book of Hindi in Hungarian.

In 2002 and 2007 she organised International Hindi Conferences in Budapest in collaboration with the Embassy of India, which provided excellent occasions for professors of Hindi in Central Europe to meet and exchange views. She regularly has classes on Hindi literature under the Erasmus Exchange Programme at the University of Vienna and other universities. She has delivered lectures in several conferences, and takes an active part in the work of the Modern Hindi Workshops. In 2002 she was honoured with the Dr. George Grierson Award by the President of India for promoting Hindi Studies in Hungary, and in 2017 with the József Ürményi Award by the Faculty of Humanities of the Eötvös Loránd University for excellence in teaching and education. She has been the president of the Indo-Hungarian Friendship Society since 2011. Since 1993 she has been organising with the support of the Embassy of India, Budapest an Orientation Course on Indian culture and Hindi classes on three levels. The course and the classes have been popular among several generations of India-enthusiasts, and they give an opportunity to the young Indologists to intro­duce themselves with lectures.