Dr Szinan Radi

I am a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellow specialising in the socio-economic and global history of Eastern Europe. My research interests span money (and its temporal and spatial dimensions), political economy, and everyday economic life in the modern world, and more generally historical theories and the philosophy of social science. My research to date has been published in Europe-Asia Studies (2022), Contemporary European History (2023), and Economy and Society (2025).

My first book manuscript (in progress) based on my thesis, entitled 'Contesting Money: The Politics of Time, Value, and the Common Good in Postwar Hungary, 1945–1958', argues that money remained central in socialist Hungary not only as an economic tool, but also as a form of power that shaped citizens' memories, experiences, and expectations of value, ultimately influencing the political transformation of the postwar state.

At Exeter, I am continuing research on my second book project, which examines how money shaped socialist Eastern Europe’s economic and cultural connections with the Middle East from the 1960s onwards, influencing Eastern European perceptions of global integration, the fall of communism, and the rise of populist multipolar globalisation in the region.

I obtained my BA 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 2023. Before joining Exeter, I held a Rosztoczy Postdoctoral Fellowship at the NYU Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia (2023), an ESRC Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Cambridge (2023–4), and a Max Weber Fellowship at the European University Insitute in Florence, Italy (2024–5).