History of the institute

The Institute for Hungarian and Applied Linguistics was established in its current form in 2018 with the integration of the following units:

• Institute of Applied Linguistics and Foreign Language Teaching
• Institute of Literature and Cultural Studies
• Department of Hungarian Linguistics

The Department of Applied Linguistics has been offering courses in neurolinguistics, psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics and applied linguistics first to the students of the English, Hungarian, French and German Departments since 1993,  It also ran an independent major program in Applied linguistics between 2002 and 2009. The first Head of Department was Prof. Zsolt Lengyel (1993-2009). In line with the changes in higher education due to the Bologna Process, an Applied linguistics MA program was launched in 2009, which has also been operated in the English language since 2016. In addition to the educational activities, the staff of the Institute have been involved in intensive research activities in the areas of bi- and multilingualism, child language and the mental lexicon. Since 2013, distinguished international professors have also been participating in running the Applied linguistics MA major in the English language.

The former department became a part of the institute by integrating into the former Foreign Language Education Centre and Pannon Language Examination Centre operated by the staff of the department in 2011. At that time, the name of the institute was the Institute of Applied Linguistics and Language Education, and it was headed by Dr. Judit Navracsics.

In 2012, the Department of Hungarian Linguistics joined the organization as well, which, until 2018, was operating as the Institute for Hungarian and Applied Linguistics. Its former liabilities included running a Hungarian Language and Literature BA program together with three MA programs: Teacher of Hungarian, Teacher of language and speech development and Applied linguistics. In addition, the Institute was responsible for the foreign language education in the Veszprém campus of the University of Pannonia, and also for managing and running the Pannon Language Examination Centre. Meanwhile the staff of the institute, including the international professors, founded and developed the Multilingualism Doctoral School in 2015. The doctoral program was launched in February 2016.

In 2018, the Pannon Language Examination Centre and the Centre of Language Education became independent units, while in that year the former Institute of Literature and Cultural Studies joined the Institute to work together with the other units in the training programs of Hungarian language and literature BA, Teacher training of Hungarian, Drama and theatre, Literature and cultural studies MA and Theatre Studies MA.