Zoltán Rónay has been elected co-chair of the Higher Education Special Interest Group (HE SIG), the professional community within the Comparative & International Education Society (CIES) dedicated to higher education research.

Founded in 1956 and headquartered in Pittsburgh, CIES is the world’s oldest and largest comparative and international educational research organization, bringing together approximately 1,000 institutions and more than 3,500 individual members. Within the organization, the Higher Education Section (HE SIG) is led by two co-chairs, who are elected for two-year terms but in different years.

Prior to his appointment, the associate professor with habilitation status at ELTE PPK presented his latest research findings at the CIES 2026 global conference in San Francisco, titled Re-examining Education and Peace in a Divided World.

In his first presentation, Zoltán Rónay analyzed the experiences of the model shift in Hungarian higher education as part of the OTKA project led by Gergely Kováts. The study sought to determine how members of university senates view their own roles and the senate’s potential within the new governance structure.

In his second presentation - as part of his own Advanced grant proposal - the researcher from the Education-Law-Pedagogy research group presented a systematic review of the literature. The research examined which previous studies at the elementary and secondary school levels had addressed students’ and teachers’ legal attitudes and their relationship to the law.

As part of his overseas trip, the expert was invited by the University of New Mexico to lead a special training session for the institution’s Ph.D. and Ed.D. students and faculty. During the workshop, participants explored critical issues such as the practical dilemmas of academic freedom, recognizing self-censorship, and the responsible exercise of researcher autonomy in the modern university environment.