He was born on 29 March 1947 in Budapest, Hungary. He took M.A. degree at the Eötvös Loránd University, Faculty of Arts in English studies in Budapest in 1970. He started his academic career at the Department of English Studies at the Attila József University, Szeged and he became an educator and a research fellow in 1971. He received his dr. univ. degree in 1974. He took candidate of Linguistics degree in 1980. In 1982 he was appointed to an associate professor. He was appointed to the head of the department, and he acted as the chairman from 1985 until 1986. He was awarded Doctor of Science degree in Linguistics in 1992. In 1993 he received the title of university professor. From 1997 until 2000 he was the Vice-Rector for Science, Research Development and Grants, JATE. From 1993 until 2000 he acted as a subprogram leader of Theoretical linguistics in the Graduate School in Linguistics at the JATE In 2000 the universities and colleges in Szeged were integrated into the University of Szeged. From 2000 until 2017 he was the chairman of the united Graduate School in Linguistics and he was a member of the Council of the Graduate School in Linguistics and a VIP member of the doctoral school.at the University of Szeged. From 2002 to 2017 he managed the Research Institute for Linguistics, Hungarian Academy of Sciences as its director until his retirement. He was elected to corresponding membership of the HAS in 2016. In 2017 the honorific title of professor emeritus was conferred upon him. He is a notable and respected scientist both in Hungary and around the world and developed significant research and professional relationships. István Kenesei lectured as a visiting professor at several universities of the world: University of Delaware in Newark, Delaware, Ca' Foscari University of Venice in Italy and Utrecht University in Netherlands. His working papers were issued in both national and international prestigious professional research scientific journals, and 156 books and scientific articles were published.
His main fields of interest are in the generative grammar and theoretical linguistics with special respect to the foundational problems of syntax, semantics and morphology. Within the framework generative grammar of linguistics he revealed the relationship between the cognitive and the syntactic factors of linguistic theorizing.
