Biography

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​Jennifer Walker is an ex-physicist turned freelance writer specialising in art, travel and culture. She mostly writes about Budapest, Hungary, and surrounding regions in Hungary, Austria, and Central and Eastern Europe. She is currently co-authoring a guidebook on Prague, Vienna, Budapest for Moon Travel Guides. She just published a guide on Budapest with Insight Guides, and wrote the Hungary chapter for Lonely Planet's Global Coffee Tour.  

Originally from the UK, Jennifer comes from a mixed background of British and Hungarian heritage. Born in Epsom, Surrey, Jennifer grew up between East Sussex and Budapest, infusing her with a wanderlust and a fascination for other cultures.

In 2005, she graduated with an MPhys in Physics with Satellite Technology with a First Class with Honours from the University of Surrey, and conducted her masters research at GSI (Institute for Heavy Ion Research) in Darmstadt, Germany for a year before moving to Madrid, Spain to undertake her postgraduate studies. She has a Masters of Advanced Studies in Nuclear Physics from the Universidad Compluntense de Madrid and finished her PhD in Physics (Summa Cum Laude) at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid in 2011, and has conducted experiments and research work at CSIC (Spain), CERN (Switzerland), GSI (Germany) and GANIL (France).  

After completing her studies, Jennifer threw caution - and physics - to the wind to pursue her true passion: writing. She has been working as a professional writer since graduation and her work has been published in a variety of print and online publications across the globe. She lived in Madrid, Spain for seven years before she moved to Tbilisi, Georgia for a few months in 2012 to work for the national English language newspaper Georgia Today. In 2013, she decided to move again and returned to her Hungarian roots in Budapest. 

Currently she's a copywriter by day, but she also works for Lonely Planet as the on-the-ground writer for Budapest on a digital level, and also blogs about travel and culture at Perceptive Travel, Messy Nessy Chic, and Huffington Post, and sometimes about language for Oxford Dictionaries' blog Oxford Words. She also has written for a variety of local English language Hungarian publications, including The Budapest Times, We Love Budapest and Budapest Local.

She has written  for: DK Travel (Penguin books), National Geographic, Lonely Planet, Condé Nast Traveler, The Independent, BBC Travel, The Guardian, CNN Travel, MorningCalm (Korean Air's in-flight magazine), Bookwitty, VICE News, Slate, Quartz, Tripadvisor, Draft Magazine, Paste Magazine, The Calvert Journal, Oryx (Qatar Airways' in-flight magazine), OxfordWords, Tablet Magazine, Viator, Gadling, The Matador Network, GOOD Magazine, Atlas Obscura, Bootsnall, Move Guides, Inside Guides, The Expeditioner, ARTES Magazine, Kunstpedia, The Culture-ist and Untapped Cities.

Jennifer is also a member of the British Guild of Travel Writers, Travel Writers UK and Travel Massive. 

Jennifer Walker has been published in: