Péter Apor (Senior Research Fellow, BTK TTI) is coordinator of the research sub-field on non-physical work and deals with the professionalisation of expert cultures, with a special focus on their international context. He explores the role of expertise in the intensifying international relations of Kádár-era Hungary and the impact of international challenges on the status of expertise in the domestic context. He examines these processes in three areas particularly exposed to international influences: through the activities of expert groups in foreign trade, water management and sexology-family planning.
His research pays particular attention to the ways in which knowledge transfers and professional cooperation in Western Europe and North America, as well as the development projects in the Third World, facilitated the professionalisation of these fields, and to the forms and places of work that emerged thereof. It focuses on the question of how the institutionalisation of the professions and the growing importance of experts through international relations helped advocacy, representing interests and lobbying in the workplace.
Keywords: professionalization, knowledge transfer, international cooperation, development, globalization