Borbála Zsuzsanna Török is a Fellow of the Kolleg from April 2026 to June 2026.
I am a Senior Postdoctoral Researcher at the Institute of Austrian Historical Research, University of Vienna. I am the author of two books: Exploring Transylvania: Geographies of Knowledge and Entangled Histories of a Multiethnic Province, 1790–1914 (Leiden: Brill, 2015) and The Science of State Power in the Habsburg Monarchy, 1790–1880 (Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2024). My research focuses on the Habsburg Monarchy in European and global context; the history of state sciences and statistics; East-Central Europe’s interconnected multiethnic scientific cultures in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; and the history of modern civil justice and property. My current collaborative research project, funded by the Austrian Research Fund (Grant DOI: 10.55776/P34380), asks how civil justice was used over time in the Habsburg Monarchy and in its successor states—Austria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Romania—after new procedural codes were introduced in Austria (1895/1898) and Hungary (1911/1915).
Legal unification between imperial legacy and capitalist efficiency: Civil Court practices in interwar Austria and Romania
The Austrian Code of Civil Procedure (ÖZPO, 1895) has been known for establishing the norms for ‘social civil proceeding.’ The code made civil litigation shorter, fairer and more affordable, and had a wide international resonance. My project analyzes how these norms were applied in the practice of district courts since its introduction in the Habsburg Manarchy and probes ino its legacy in the successor states during the interwar decades.
The literature underlines not only the international adaptation, but also the continuity of civil procedural law in the post-Habsburg political order. This aligns with research on imperial legacies indicating the longevity of infrastructures, institutions, administrative routines and networks after the dissolution of the dual monarchy at the end of World War I. Such continuities proved to be vital for countries with enlarged territories, like Romania, Poland or Czechoslovakia, grappling with diverse regional legal and administrative legacies inherited from various imperial frameworks.
Comparing the judicial practice of selected district courts from interwar Romania and Austria, I conduct an empirical analysis of the characteristics that have been habitually associated with social political measures. Particularly the efforts to make procedural law more efficient and fairer shall be subject to scrutiny: did they eventually serve social equity and broadened access to justice, or did they rather facilitate economic ends?
Monographs
The Science of State Power in the Habsburg Monarchy, 1790–1880. New Perspectives on Central and Eastern European Studies, vol. 5. Oxford--New York: Berghahn Books, 2024.
Exploring Transylvania. Geographies of Knowledge and Entangled Histories of a Multiethnic Prov-ince, 1790 – 1914. National Cultivations of Culture, vol. 10. Brill Publishers, Leiden, 2015.
Edited Volumes, Special Issues
Ed. article cluster “Uses of civil justice and social policy in the Habsburg Monarchy, 1873-1914” forthcoming, European Review of History: Revue européenne d'histoire.
Thematic issue “Collective Land Rights and Capitalist Economy, 19th-21st Centuries”, Zeitschrift für Rechtssoziologie, The German Journal of Law and Society, 44, 2 (2024): 289-419.
Articles
“A Battle for Property by Legal Means´: Procedural Reform and Social Politics in the Habsburg Monarchy”, European Review of History: Revue européenne d'histoire. https://doi.org/10.1080/13507486.2025.2511708
“Collective Property in the Modern State: Émile de Laveleye´s Primitive Property in its Global Con-text,” Zeitschrift für Rechtssoziologie, The German Journal of Law and Society, 44, 2 (2024): 369-389. https://doi.org/10.1515/zfrs-2024-2010