Zsófia Nádai graduated from Eötvös Loránd University (Budapest, Hungary) with a degree in Archaeology. Her BA and MA theses were about Ottoman and Early Modern Period pottery assessment of an excavation in the Watertown of Buda. Afterwards, she worked as an archaeologist at a state-owned company on the sites of the National Castle and Mansion Program and Hauszmann Program. Among others, she led a trial trench excavation of the palisade structure of Kisvárda Castle. In her MA thesis at CEU, she elaborated on the historical and archaeological data gathered from this castle. For two years she worked at the Hungarian Research Centre for the Humanities, Institute of Archaeology and she is still a member of the project of Gyöngyi Kovács: Complex microregional research of castles and castle estates of the Transdanubian region (1300-1700). Inspired by this project in her current doctoral research she is turning to the environmental history of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. She assesses the historical and archaeological data in complementation with natural datasets of the smaller region of Kisvárda Castle. The work focuses on the physical environment elements: river Tisza's water management and floods, deliberate flooding for defensive purposes, forestry and the impact of the defensive structures (palisade building) compared to wood usage during peacetime.