Research Interests

Gergely Olt is an assistant researcher at the Centre for Social Sciences, Institute for Sociology. Currently he is a PhD candidate at the ELTE Sociology Doctoral School. His research interests in the broadest senses are the complexity of relations between the state, political power and capital and how rents are created for given social groups. For this he uses a postcolonial approach of political economic mechanisms. These issues appear in research about how local political and institutional contexts affect urban transformations and how these contextually different experiences can be theorised by the revision of universally claimed political economic theories. His publications are about locally appearing social conflicts (i.e. gentrification, touristification, mega-projects), social movements involved in them, and about issues of local sovereignty in different socio-political contexts. These publications were the results of several empirical research projects such as “The sociology of urban planning  - urban planning and society” lead by Adrienne Csizmady,  the H2020 project “RE-DWELL” about affordable housing provision, or the project about “Residential mortgage lending” and the foreign currency mortgages, a joint project of Metropolitan Research Institute and Centre for Social Sceinces.  

Selected Publications

Csizmady, A., Bagyura, M., Olt, G. (2022) From a Small Village to an Exclusive Gated Community: Unplanned Suburbanisation and Local Sovereignty in Post-Socialist Hungary. Urban Planning, 7 (3). pp. 115-129. ISSN 2183-7635

Buzogány, A., Kerényi, Sz., Olt, G. (2022) Back to the grassroots? The shrinking space of environmental activism in illiberal Hungary, Environmental Politics, 31:7, 1267-1288, DOI: 10.1080/09644016.2022.2113607

Olt, G., Smith, MK., Csizmady, A. Sziva, I. (2021) Gentrification, tourism and the night-time economy in Budapest’s district VII–the role of regulation in a post-socialist context, in Smith A., and Eldridge, A. (eds.) Tourism and the Night - Rethinking Nocturnal Destinations, Routledge p. 126,

Olt, G. & Csizmady, A. (2020) Gentrification and functional change in Budapest – ‘ruin bars’ and the commodification of housing in a post-socialist context, Urban Development Issues, vol. 65, pp. 17–26.

Olt, G and Lepeltier-Kutasi, L. (2018) Urban Rehabilitation and Residential Struggles in the Post-socialist City of Budapest in Oosterlynck, S., Beeckmans, L. Bassens, D. Derudder, B. Segaert, B., Braeckmans, L. (eds.) The City as a Global Political Actor, Routledge, pp. 280

Research Projects

The sociology of urban planning - urban planning and society, 2017-2023 (participant, PI: Adrienne Csizmady)

The potential and limitations of smart technologies in the light of social acceptance (participant, PI: Adrienne Csizmady)

RE-DWELL - Delivering affordable and sustainable housing in Europe Horizon 2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Innovative Action - Innivative Training Network (MSCA-ITN) Head of research (at the Hungarian partner): Adrienne Csizmady