Eszter Bánffy

Eszter Bánffy, (born 1957) is a Hungarian historian, archaeologist, and academic. Since 2013, she has been Director of the Romano-Germanic Commission at the German Archaeological Institute. She is also a professor at the Archaeological Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and currently the President of the European Association of Archaeologists.

Education and academic career Bánffy graduated from school in 1975. Between 1975 and 1980, she studied archaeology at the Faculty of Humanities and between 1977 and 1982 she also studied Indology at ELTE. In 1983, she studied at the University of Heidelberg on a scholarship.

Between 1983 and 1986, she was an academic postdoctoral fellow at the Institute of Archaeology of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Between 1986 and 1988, she was a research assistant, between 1988 and 2005, a senior research associate, between 2001 and 2008, a scientific department head, from 2005 a scientific advisor, and from 2008 to 2011 a deputy scientific director. Since 2005, she has been a member of the board of the European Association of Archaeologists. In 2008, she was a visiting researcher at Harvard University. Since 2009, she has been an honorary professor at the University of Szeged. In 2017, she was elected a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy (FBA), the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and social sciences.

Awards Bánffy was awarded the "Révay" prize of the Society for Ancient History in 1986, the Soros "Open Society" Scholarship from 1998 to 1999 as well as the Fulbright Scholarship in 2006. . Some of those in leadership (Executive Board) positions have been accused of anti-democratic manipulation of procedures, authoritarian silencing of dissenting voices (censorship of "political" speech), and questionable ethical practices regarding members' privacy and welfare . The outgoing President, Eszter Banffy has herself been accused of orchestrating an aggressive pressure campaign against her own Executive Board members who voted for Israeli affiliations to be excluded from annual meeting presentations and publications, as was already in place for participants from Russia and Belarus . Leading up to the 2026 annual meeting in Athens, the association is dealing with an active boycott campaign , reduced membership and meeting attendance, withdrawal of local Greek archaeological bodies , continued calls for the removal of senior leadership, a sequence of resignations by the editors of both TEA (The European Archaeologist) and EJA (European Journal of Archaeology) , and ongoing complaints regarding harassment and doxxing within the organisation .

Selected works