Online publication on 15 years of the Momentum Programme
The Momentum (Lendület) Programme of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences has played a decisive role for more than a decade and a half in supporting scientific excellence, fostering the establishment of outstanding research groups with the potential to achieve breakthrough results. At the end of November, the Academy celebrated the anniversary of the programme. On this occasion, an online publication was released presenting the history of the initiative.
In the online volume, following an introductory foreword by the Secretary General, readers can find the reflections of József Pálinkás, the founding President of the Momentum Programme, along with appreciations by former and current members of the Momentum Jury, as well as a study by the Library and Information Centre of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences on the programme’s effectiveness. The main part of the publication consists of summaries of Momentum grant recipients between 2009 and 2023. The volume concludes with a list of the winning research groups up to 2024. In the words of József Pálinkás: “The principal investigators of the 134 research groups established within the research network and the 129 groups formed at universities by 2024 are now key figures in Hungarian scientific life; they make up the decisive majority of the younger (under 55) members of the Academy.”
The publication also includes the data and results of the MTA BTK Lendület (Momentum) Mobility Research Group and the MTA–BTK Lendület (Momentum) BASES Research Group. Quoting from the volume:
“The MTA BTK Lendület Mobility Research Group (2015–2020) investigated the first 1,000 years (2500–1500 BC) of the nearly 2,000-year-long Bronze Age in the Carpathian Basin, focusing on the remains of the contemporaries living in the territory of present-day Hungary of the builders of the great pyramids and the Greek heroes buried in the Mycenaean shaft graves. Through multidisciplinary collaborations, the project integrated increasingly refined methods from several life and natural sciences—genetics, pathology, absolute dating, isotope geochemistry, and geophysics—into archaeology. Its primary research objective was to map, in greater detail than ever before, the mobility and social stratification of contemporary societies, as well as their exchange networks. By applying state-of-the-art analytical techniques, the research group was able to move closer to answering a number of long-standing questions in Bronze Age research, positioning itself at the forefront of international scholarship on the period.
The research group funded in 2023 in the Advanced category of the Momentum Programme (2023–2028) represents both a continuation and a methodological renewal of multidisciplinary basic research on the first millennium of the Bronze Age. The project undertakes the systematic reorganization, analysis, and publication—within multi-level, cloud-based databases—of bioarchaeological data derived from cutting-edge archaeological and scientific investigations, as well as archaeometric data developed in collaboration with materials science. The available datasets are further expanded through new insights into a previously less studied topic: the economic resources of the period, which are integrated into settlement network research.
These complex analyses, carried out using new methodologies, allow not only for macro-level investigations but also open up perspectives on microhistory, enabling the reconstruction of personal life histories of individuals associated with different levels of Bronze Age society. The social impact of the project’s scientific results is supported by outreach activities available on its website and social media platforms, as well as through the production of short films, podcasts, and multiple exhibitions, and participation in the MTA Alumni Program with public lectures. One of the most forward-looking outcomes of the project is the establishment of a domestic research network that has enabled multidisciplinary analyses in archaeology that were previously unavailable or only feasible through international collaborations, along with the active involvement of early-career researchers in this network.”