Andrea Kiss's research and publications mainly focus on long-term changes in the historical environment of Hungary and the Carpathian Basin with special emphasis on climate variabilities (e.g. long-term temperature reconstruction) and weather-related natural extremes (e.g. floods) from the high Middle Ages up to the nineteenth and twentieth century. As part of small interdisciplinary research team, she also took part in complex investigations studying the historical changes of physical environment and long-term human-environment interactions in selected small, sensitive sample areas, such as the shallow lake-environment of the Fertő/Neusiedlersee, or heavily eroded hillslopes of deserted vineyards in the Danube Bend. Her investigations in medieval environmental history are mainly concentrated on floods, the environmental history of Lake Fertő/Neusiedl, and some of the weather-related environmental crises in the Carpathian Basin. Kiss’ current main focus is devoted to Danube floods.
She holds an MSc in geography, MA-s in history and Hungarian medieval studies from Szeged University; an MA and a PhD in medieval studies from Central European University. Out of sixteen years teaching at Szeged University, for nine years she worked as a lecturer in historical geography, environmental history, and related disciplines, giving lectures and practical courses to geography, environmental science, and history students, mainly on graduate and postgraduate level. Since 2010 she has been a research fellow at the Habsburg Historical Institute in Budapest and Szeged University. As a contract partner, she has been involved in the European mega-project on the climate variabilites of the last millennium entitled Millennium—Past Climate and its Dynamics.
RCC Research Project: Causes and Consequences of Major Eighteenth-Century Danube Floods at Pest-Buda (pdf, 13,5KB)
Film Interview with Andrea Kiss
Selected Publications:
- “Árvizek és magas vízszintek a 13–15. századi Magyarországon az egykorú írott források tükrében” (Floods and High Water Levels in 13th–15th-century Hungary, in the Light of Contemporary Documentary Evidence). In Környezettörténet 2 (Environmental History 2), Edited by Miklós Kázmér, 43–55. Budapest: Hantken Kiadó, 2011.
- “An Experimental 392-Year Documentary-Based Multi Proxy (Vine and Grain) Reconstruction of May–July Temperatures for Kőszeg, West-Hungary.” International Journal of Biometeorology 55, no. 4 (2011): 595–611. With Rob Wilson and István Bariska.
- “Monthly and Seasonal Temperature Reconstructions for Central Europe Derived from Documentary Evidence and Instrumental Records since AD 1500.” Climatic Change 101, no. 1–2 (2010): 69–107. With Petr Dobrovolný, Anders Moberg, Rudolf Brázdil, Christian Pfister, Rüdiger Glaser, Rob Wilson, Aryan van Engelen, Danuta Limanówka, Monika Halíčková, Jarmila Macková, Dirk Riemann, Jürg Luterbacher, and Reinhard Böhm.
- "Historical climatology in Hungary: Role of documentary evidence in the study of past climates and hydrometeorological extremes." Időjárás 113, no. 4 (2009): 315–339.
- "Suburbia autem maxima in parte videntur esse deleta – Danube Icefloods and the Pitfalls of Urban Planning: Pest and its Suburbs in 1768–1799." In From Villages to Cyberspace, edited by Csaba Kovács, 271–282. Szeged: University Press, 2007.
