New Book Releases by CEU Academic Staff and Researchers | Spring 2026 CEU Library. Photo by CEU/Daniel Vegel. Explore the newest titles from CEU's academic staff and researchers. Books were published on topics ranging from philosophy and politics to patents and more. Table of Contents Patents and Global Administrative Law Curating Learning Journeys: Transformational Experiences in the IR Classroom and Beyond Iris Murdoch's Moral Philosophy: Reframing the True, the Real, and the Good Tainted Democracy, Viktor Orban and the Subversion of Hungary Living in the End Times: Ritual, History, and Ethics in Romania's Old Belief Falu Patents and Global Administrative Law This book by CEU alum David Tilt , who received his doctorate from CEU’s Department of Legal Studies , has published this book with Routledge in 2026 based on his CEU thesis research. It applies values and concepts from Global Administrative Law (GAL) to international patent law, demonstrating how limiting technocratic and overly economic language can be. The book argues that, in its international form, patent law can be analyzed using the same principles of participation, transparency, and accountability found in national administrative law. At the heart of the book is the question: What does international patent law look like when approached through the lens of such values? The book presents three interrelated contexts: EU patent law, bilateral trade agreements, and the multilateral space. A fundamental objective of the book is to challenge the tendency towards technocratic isolation in patent law. It represents a new way of conceptualizing and understanding how patent law develops on a global scale. View book Curating Learning Journeys: Transformational Experiences in the IR Classroom and Beyond This new monograph by Associate Professor Erzsebet Strausz from CEU’s Department of International Relations was published in February 2026 by Palgrave Macmillan, as part of the Political Pedagogies series . The open access book invites exploration into learning journeys as they unfold in, through, and beyond the thinking space of a critically oriented postgraduate International Relations theory course. The book draws upon the transformational potential of writing and creative research practice both in the classroom and through reflexive, first-person writing that engages the lived experiences of academic study and world politics. It provides conceptual and practice-based resources for rethinking and creatively engaging with the politics and transformational possibilities of pedagogy as acts of curation in the field, contemporary higher education, and everyday life. Registered attendees can hear about the book from the author during the May 13 book launch at CEU. View book Iris Murdoch's Moral Philosophy: Reframing the True, the Real, and the Good This title by Associate Professor Cathy Mason from CEU’s Department of Philosophy was published in February 2026 by Oxford University Press. It provides the first in-depth exploration of Iris Murdoch’s metaethical thought with an examination of the background commitments about the nature of the ethical realm that underlie her thinking. Murdoch (1919-1999) was a thinker of extraordinary breadth and ambition. The book argues that her insistence on the pervasiveness of the moral and the significance of ideas of perfection led to a sea change in metaethics - the branch of philosophy that investigates the nature, scope, and meaning of moral judgment. Murdoch’s work contains novel conceptions of key concepts such as truth, realism, and the good. The book examines her conceptions of these central philosophical ideas, as well as her answers to other questions that arise out of this system, such as the relation between knowledge and motivation and the purpose of morality. View book Tainted Democracy, Viktor Orban and the Subversion of Hungary Founding director of the CEU Democracy Institute Leadership Academy Zsuzsanna Szelenyi has published this book with Hurst in March 2026. It follows Hungary’s descent into autocracy at the hands of Viktor Orban from the perspective of the author, a former parliamentary ally turned outspoken political opponent. Szelenyi, a leading member of Orban’s Fidesz in its early years, witnessed first-hand the party’s shift from liberalism to populist nationalism. The book offers an insider’s account of Fidesz’s evolution since its creation, explaining how the party rose to leadership of the country under Orban and made sweeping legal, political and economic changes to solidify its grip on power - from reining in the public media to slashing the number of parliamentary seats. The book shares insights into the global rise of populist autocracy and how it can be challenged. View book Living in the End Times: Ritual, History, and Ethics in Romania's Old Belief This book, by Professor Vlad Naumescu from CEU’s Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology , was published in April by Indiana University Press. The book traces how a small community of Russian Old Believers in contemporary Romania navigated a century of crises by turning apocalyptic expectations into a method of hope. It offers an in-depth ethnographic and historical exploration of the persistence of Old Belief in modernity, exploring their ways of making history, pursuing continuity, and inscribing their historical experience into a narrative of radical hope. In a world increasingly marked by apocalyptic anxieties, Old Believers’ capacity to turn rupture into continuity, loss into creative transformation, and endings into new beginnings offers a powerful example of resilience and renewal. The book is accompanied by the documentary film, “Birds’ Way,” offering a layered ethnographic account where the visual and the textual speak to each other. View book Falu CEU Visiting Professor Daniel Halasz , from CEU’s Visual Studies Platform and the Department of Historical Studies , has spent several years researching Hungary's smallest communities, villages with fewer than a hundred residents. The resulting photobook, Falu (Hungarian for "village"), grew out of this long fieldwork and is part of his doctoral research at KU Leuven LUCA School of Arts and Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design . It is currently available for pre-order. The book is about resilience and practical resourcefulness, and what it looks like when people repair, reuse, and improvise under constraint, generation after generation. It brings together 72 photographs with fragments of text, including statistical data, bits of conversation, and literary excerpts, creating multiple voices rather than one closed narrative. View book Explore previous selections of books published by CEU academic staff and researchers News Research News Redefining the Rules CEU Democracy Institute Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology Visual Studies Platform Department of Philosophy Department of International Relations Doctoral School of Political Science, Public Policy, and International Relations Recent News April 23, 2026 CEU Students Experience Real-World Finance at the Vienna Stock Exchange April 23, 2026 Central European University Launches Collaboration with GitHub to Advance AI-Ready Education and Research April 22, 2026 DNDS at the Long Night of Research Related Stories More News January 5, 2026 Watch Maria Kronfeldner in the ARTE documentary "42 - Die Antwort auf fast alles" January 7, 2026 2026 William James Prize awarded to our alumnus January 9, 2026 Vienna Data Analytics Jamboree Bridges Academia and Industry More News