Boris Zala is a Slovak social democratic politician, a member of Slovak parliament and the current Chairman of the parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee. He is also Assistant Professor at Constantine the Philosopher University (UKF) in Nitra and Chair of the Political Science and European Studies Department at UKF’s Faculty of Philosophy.

Zala graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy of the Comenius University in Bratislava in 1979. After graduation he proceeded with his study of philosophy and received his PhDr degree (1981) and CSc degree (1995) from the same university. In 1981 he worked as journalist at Slovak Radio but was forced to quit the job due to political persecution and seek employment in various manual worker professions before he eventually managed to get a research job at the Social Development and Labour Research Institute in Bratislava in 1984. In 1990 he became head of the Secretariat of the Speaker of Slovak parliament and Lecturer in Philosophy at Comenius University, Bratislava. Since 2000 he has been Chair of the Political Science and European Studies Department at UKF’s Faculty of Philosophy in the western Slovakian city of Nitra. He is author of six philosophy, political science and history monographs and has written dozens of research studies and papers dealing with social science issues. As a media analyst and political commentator he wrote hundreds of political analyses for the Slovak press and participated in or co-authored a number of media projects in Slovak Television (STV) and Slovak Radio (SRo). In 1988-89, Zala took active part in organising protest activities against the Communist regime and was one of the co-founders of Public Against Violence (VPN) – a broad civic movement established by democratic activists with the view of putting the country back on democratic track within the framework of the Velvet Revolution of 1989.