Blanka Benkő-Kovács
Founder - Political Advisor, International Security and Defence Policy Expert
Biography
Her research and policy focus is primarily on the foreign and security policy dynamics of Central Asia, Iran, and Afghanistan, with particular attention to the interconnections between climate-related risks, energy policy, and regional geopolitical developments. She currently works as an adviser at the Ministry for the Living Environment and serves as an external expert at the Ludovika Center for Turkic Studies (University of Public Service). Previously, she worked as a political adviser at the State Secretariat for Circular Economy and Climate Policy of the Ministry of Energy. Before that, she served first as an adviser and later as a strategic analyst at the Institute for Energy Strategy. For more than five years, she worked at the Migration Research Institute as an analyst and media relations coordinator. Throughout her career, she has also been involved in coordinating international relations and development projects at the INPARK–NIPÜF Group. During the first year of the Russia–Ukraine war, she supported the work of the Hungarian Red Cross as a coordinator in the field of humanitarian crisis response. She completed her studies at Ludovika University of Public Service, earning a BA in International Public Administration and an MSc in International Security and Defence Policy. She is currently a PhD student at Széchenyi István University.
Areas of Expertise
Education
MSc in International Security and Defence Policy
University of Public Service2023
BA in International Administration
University of Public Service2021
Why Lakes Shrink: The Decisions behind Water Crises
Shrinking lakes have become one of the most visible symbols of climate change. Yet their decline tells a more complex story. Alongside a changing climate, decisions about water management, agriculture and development play a decisive role in water crises—and can shape the fate of a country’s or region’s water resources for decades.
Aurel Stein: The Hungarian Scholar Who Rediscovered the Geography of Eurasia
“I have had a wonderful life and it could not be concluded more happily than in Afghanistan which I have wanted to visit for sixty years.” Few sentences could capture Aurel Stein’s life more precisely. When Sir Aurel Stein died in Kabul in October 1943, at the age of eighty, he had finally reached a country he had been trying to enter for decades and much of his scholarly life. Afghanistan was not only an extraordinary journey for him, but the country also lay near the geographical centre of the territory that had occupied Stein for more than half a century.
György Almásy: Documenting Central Asia at the Turn of the Century
At the beginning of the twentieth century, Central Asia was no longer the largely inaccessible world through which Ármin Vámbéry had travelled in disguise four decades earlier. The Russian Empire had consolidated its rule over much of the region, railways were reaching Tashkent and Andijan, and the imperial administration was transforming the political and economic landscape of Turkestan. Yet beyond the expanding cities and transport networks, large parts of the Tien Shan and the societies inhabiting its valleys and high pastures remained little documented by European scholarship.