Dr Szinan Radi

I am a social and economic historian of Eastern Europe, and my work focuses on state-society relations, everyday economic life, and the popular experience of communist rule. My PhD considered the social history of the Hungarian forint between the end of the Second World War in 1945 and the consolidation of communist power in the late 1950s. Specifically, my thesis used various case studies such as the world-record Hungarian hyperinflation of 1945-6, loans, lotteries, state-loans, and taxes to examine the influence of money and its perceived value by ordinary citizens on the state's exercise of power in Hungary between 1945 and 1958.

I obtained my BA degree in History from the Karoli Gaspar University in 2015, my Master's degree in History (Economic and Social History) from the University of Manchester in 2017, my research Master's degree in Social Science Research (Economic and Social History) from the University of Nottingham in 2019, and my PhD in History from the University of Nottingham in 2022. Before joining Cambridge as an ESRC Postdoctoral Fellow in October 2023, I held a Rosztoczy Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia at New York University between January and September 2023.

Currently, I focus on two major projects. First, I am turning my PhD into a monograph titled 'Contesting Money: Challenging Power and Pursuing the Common Good in Postwar Hungary, 1945–1958' for publication with Oxford University Press. Second, I am developing a new book project on the global history of money in socialism, exploring Eastern Europe's economic and monetary engagement with the Middle East from the 1960s onwards.