Get to know me

Ivan Laszlo Nagy is a Budapest-born political journalist, currently working as a Delacorte Fellow for the Columbia Journalism Review in in New York.

In 2025, he graduated from Columbia Journalism School’s Master of Arts programme with Politics concentration. He received scholarships from the Graduate School of Journalism, the Rosztoczy Foundation and the Hungarian American Coalition, and he is a winner of The Association of Foreign Press Corespondents’ Scholarship Award for outstanding reporting on democratic security. He holds a First-Class Honours degree in Journalism, Communications and Politics BA from Cardiff University.

His Master’s thesis, a 15,000-word longform project, told the life story and public battle of Dániel Karsai, a Hungarian constitutional lawyer, who spent the last year of his life battling ALS and fighting for the right to die. It was published by Switchboard Magazine in August 2025. He’s also a contributor to the The New World magazine.

Iván has also been a fellow and contributor to Visegrad Insight, the leading English-language think-tank of Central Eastern Europe since 2022, publishing analytical content and news commentary.

Prior to his move to the US, he filled a number of roles at HVG, one of Hungary’s leading independent newspapers. He was the founder and head of HVG’s podcast division, where he hosted 225 episodes and produced 405 shows within a two-year span. He was the host and editor of Fülke, the country’s top news podcast, he led the production of Kösz, jól, Hungary’s #1 show in Health, and managed six more podcasts about sustainability, business and arts, amongst others.

He was the host and chief producer of HVG’s election night broadcast in 2024 and covered the campaign in his weekly political talk show, SzavazóFülke. He also took part in documentary-making and video reporting for HVG. He received the Gábor Juhász Award for the best article published on hvg.hu in 2023, an opinion piece about Viktor Orbán’s speech at CPAC Hungary titled Wait, Viktor, you forgot your tin-foil hat!

Alongside his audiovisual work, he was also one of HVG’s leading political and political communication analysts and opinion writers. In the five years he had spent there, of which only three were full-time, he had also climbed the ranks from intern and staff writer to one of the newspaper’s daily news feed editors.

His work focuses primarily on democratic security. He is an expert on Hungarian domestic and foreign politics and regularly covers the European Union, the United States and the United Kingdom. His analytical pieces delve into the topics of populism, quasi-authoritarian regimes and political communication, while his opinion pieces revolve around civic action against injustice.