Transformative Podcast

Author: recet

Welcome to the Transformative Podcast, which takes the year 1989 as a starting point to think about social, economic, and cultural transformations on a European and global scale. This podcast is produced by the Research Center for the History of Transformations (RECET) and its managing director Irena Remestwenski. Our patron is Philipp Ther, and we could not do it without Leonid Motz, Jannis Panagiotidis, Rosamund Johnston, Sheng Peng, and Jelena Dureinovic.
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Language: en

Genres: Science, Social Sciences

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Sex Tourism in Socialist Hungary (Priska Komaromi)
Episode 80
Wednesday, 27 May, 2026

What does the lens of sex work and sexuality tell us about the history of state socialism in Central and Eastern Europe? In this episode, Priska Komaromi (Humboldt University) discusses tourism aimed at Westerners that developed in socialist Hungary from the 1960s onwards, often marketed in a sexualized way. She tells Jelena Đureinović (RECET) about the interactions between Western tourists and Hungarian women, the perceptions of them in Hungarian society, and the discourses about race, civilisation, and Europeanness that permeated these relations. Priska Komaromi is a PhD candidate at Humboldt University in Berlin. Her research examines the history of gender, sex work and sexuality in Central Eastern Europe during the state socialist period, focusing particularly on Hungary.