Virág Blazsek works as a Lecturer in Commercial, Corporate and Banking Law at the University of Leeds School of Law in the United Kingdom. Her responsibilities include teaching undergraduate and master’s courses in Commercial Law, International Banking Law, Contract Law, and Insolvency Law. She serves as a personal tutor for dozens of undergraduate students and is supervising over a dozen undergraduate theses and postgraduate dissertations. In her scholarship, Virág writes about Commercial Law and Banking Law.
Virág received a Juris Doctor degree from Eötvös Loránd University, LLM and SJD degrees in International Business Law from CEU, and an LLM in U.S. and Global Business Law from Suffolk University School of Law, Boston, MA. Supported by the prestigious Thomas Buergenthal Scholarship, she also earned an LLM in Business and Finance Law from the George Washington University School of Law in Washington, D.C. During her doctoral training, Virág served as a Visiting Researcher, Visiting Scholar, and Visiting Lecturer at Fordham University School of Law, Columbia Law School, and Budapest Business School respectively. For over a decade, she also practiced as an Attorney at Law at law firms (2005-2007 and 2014), in OTP Bank Plc’s Legal Directorate in Budapest (2007-2014), and in the Office of Investment Management of the United Nations Joint Staff Pension Fund in New York City (2019-2020).
Virág greatly enjoyed her master’s and doctoral programs, particularly Tibor Várady’s course in International Commercial Arbitration, Jules Stuyck’s in Comparative Competition Law, and Tibor Tajti’s in Comparative Secured Transactions. During her doctoral training, she found the LEGS Doctoral Seminars particularly helpful. These seminars require doctoral students to build and hone a variety of academic skills while organizing and moderating Visiting Professor Seminars and Great Book Seminars. She still uses these skills in her current academic role on a daily basis. During her doctoral studies, Virág also completed an optional, two-semester CTL Program for Excellence in Teaching in Higher Education for Doctoral Students, which she absolutely recommends to current and prospective doctoral students that wish to work in academia.
During her master’s studies, Virág’s chief research interest was Competition Law; she wrote her master’s thesis on the 2009 interchange fee decision of the Hungarian competition authority; she had also worked on this case during her time as an in-house attorney at OTP. Her thesis is a comparative case study analyzing the related Hungarian and EU-level authority decisions. During and after her doctoral studies, Virág’s scholarship has focused on legal, regulatory and policy issues concerning financial stability from a comparative perspective. She is the author of the book “Banking Bailout Law: A Comparative Study of the United States, United Kingdom and the European Union” (Routledge U.S. & U.K., 2020), which is based on her defended dissertation. She has been involved in various international research projects which led to her publishing peer-reviewed articles and book chapters.
Virág received a three-year, full doctoral fellowship award from CEU in 2014 that enabled her to finance her studies and complete her research. She is particularly grateful to her former professors Tibor Várady and Tibor Tajti for their support during her doctoral studies. Virág says that her studies at CEU changed her professional life completely; the numerous research and conference grants as well as the teaching fellowship she successfully applied for and received during her studies were all very important stepping-stones on her career path.
Virág also shared with us that she particularly misses the community at CEU. While she kept busy during her studies by involving herself in publications, conferences, and grant applications, her fondest memories all revolve around her fellow master’s and doctoral students. To current and prospective students, Virág’s advice is to never ever give up on your dreams, and to focus on doing your best day-by-day, rather than focusing only on long-term outcomes. Although discouraging setbacks occur in everyone’s life, Virág emphasizes that in the long-term, hard work works; it is never “too late” and you are never “too old” to work towards achieving your dreams.