Luca Varadi

Luca Váradi is a former Marie Sklodowska-Curie research fellow and Associate Professor at the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology and at the Department of Public Policy at Central European University. From 2012 until 2025, she taught at CEU's Nationalism Studies Program. Her research focuses on ethnic prejudice and discrimination and especially on the formation of prejudice in adolescence as well as prejudice reduction and anti-discrimination.

Luca Váradi obtained her PhD in sociology at the Humboldt University in Berlin and afterwards served as a research fellow at the University of Hamburg. Her book, mapping Hungarian teenagers’ attitudes towards the Roma minority, ‘Youths Trapped in Prejudice’ was published at Springer. In Germany, she participated in the Interdisciplinary Institute for Conflict and Violence Research’s study on Group-Focused Enmity in Europe. Besides researching the formation of prejudice, she is working on projects measuring ethnic discrimination and on the development and testing of interventions aiming at reducing it.

Her current research project, funded by CIVICA, focuses on the possibilities to reduce housing discrimination faced by Roma home-seekers. In this project, she collaborates with colleagues from CEU, the London School of Economics, the Hertie School and the Municipality of Budapest. 

Luca Váradi teaches courses at CEU and also works together with teachers, NGO-s, private companies and public institutions to help utilise research results to reduce prejudice and discrimination.