All of his immediate family members graduated from MOME, and his father received an honorary doctorate from the university. Precisely because of this, he initially chose to pursue a career in the humanities, but as a doctoral candidate, he started working as an architecture and design critic. Almost two decades ago, soon after getting his doctorate, he had the opportunity to combine his work as an historian of ideology and design critic in a meaningful way in the field of Design Culture, which was just emerging internationally as a discipline. Since 2014, he has been the head of the PhD programme of the MOME Doctoral School, the main research focus of which happened to be Design Culture.
Biography
Márton Szentpéteri (born 1 October 1973) is an historian and design critic. He holds a PhD in Literary Studies (2005) and obtained venia legendi in Design Theory (2013). Between 1993 and 2002, he studied literature, linguistics, aesthetics, philosophy, and history at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, Istituto Universitario Orientale in Naples (now Università degli Studi di Napoli L'Orientale) and the Central European University in Budapest. He was a Rolf und Ursula Schneider postgraduate fellow in the Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel (2001). After earning his PhD, he became a Junior Research Fellow at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (2005-2009), a Mellon Fellow at the Netherlands Institute of Advanced Study for the Humanities and Social Sciences (2006-2007), a Deák Ferenc Postdoctoral Fellow at MOME (2006-2207) and a Marie Curie Intra-European Fellow at the University of Oxford (2010-2011) where he also held a Plumer Fellowship at St. Anne's College and was a Senior Research Fellow of the Modern European History Research Centre. Dr Szentpéteri has been a fully-tenured professor at the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design Budapest since 2018. He founded and leads the PhD programme in Design Culture Studies at the university. His main interests include early modern intellectual and cultural history and modern and contemporary design culture.
He is the author of two monographs (Johann Heinrich Alsted and the Herborn Tradition in Transylvania, in Hungarian, 2008; Design and Culture. Inclusive Design Culture, in Hungarian, 2010) and editor or co-editor of several anthologies (Poetics of Space, in Hungarian, 2010; Narrative Design, in Hungarian, 2013, Postsecularism, in Hungarian, 2020) and various periodicals (Helikon – Revue de l'Institute d'Études Littéraires du Centre de Recherche des Siences Humaines de l'Académie Hongroise des Sciences and Disegno – The Journal of Design Culture).
Between 2005 and 2010, and since 2020 as a delegate of MOME, he has attended several International Association of Universities and Colleges of Art, Design and Media (Cumulus) events at which he has given lectures, chaired sessions (Rome, 2021) and took part in working groups (Copenhagen, 2005; Nantes, 2006; Zürich, 2008; St Etienne, 2008; London, 2009). Between 2010 and 2013 he was the representative of MOME on the European League of Institutes of the Arts (ELIA) SHARE project as a member of the Work Package 2: Development 3rd Cycle Education. He has been also active in the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism (ESSWE) and was a founding member of Central and Eastern European Network for the Academic Study of Western Esotericism (CEENASWE).
He is an ad vitam member of the Netherlands Institute of Advanced Study Fellows Association (NFA) and a member of the Marie Curie Alumni Association (MCAA).
He has been a prolific lecturer at the International Society for Intellectual History (ISIH), Cumulus, ELIA, ESSWE/CEENASWE, and other conferences and colloquia in Budapest, Istanbul, Helsinki, Seoul, Nantes, Saint Etienne, Strasbourg, Amsterdam, Edinburgh, London, Bolzano, Prague, Kolding, Belgrade, Cluj, Riga, Tallinn, Jerusalem, St Andrews, Oxford, Paris, Rome, and Rovaniemi among others.
He has been a full member of the Doctoral College of the Hungarian Accreditation Body (MAB DOK) since 2019.
In 2023 he received the Apáczai Csere János Award acknowledging his educational and research work in higher education.