Institute of Contemporary History

Research interests:

• cultural and social history of Central Europe in the second half of the 20th century; systemic transformation after 1989; memory and memory politics; film and literature

Education:

• 2012–2016: School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London (UCL-SSEES), PhD in Cultural History; thesis on the cultural memory of the socialist past in the Czech Republic (defended June 2016)
• 2010–2011: University College London, MA in Comparative Literature
• 2007–2010: King’s College London, BA Comparative Literature with Film Studies

Appointments:

• since 6/2024 – Head of the Department Knowledge, culture, expertise, Institute of Contemporary History, Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague
• since 2017 – researcher, Institute of Contemporary History of the Czech Academy of Sciences
• 2016–2017 Max Weber Post-Doctoral Fellow, European University Institute, Florence

Fellowships:

• 2023 – Research Center for the History of Trasformations, University of Vienna, Visiting Fellow
• 2015 – Jan Patočka Junior Visiting Fellow, Institute of Human Sciences, Vienna
• 2013 – Visiting Assistant in Research, Yale University, Department of Comparative Literature, August-November 2013

Grants and Research Projects:

• 2023–2027: Principal Investigator Research Group for Historical Transformation Studies, Institute for Contemporary History, Czech Academy od Sciences
• 2022: The History of Charter 77 in Domestic and Transnational Perspective, Czech Science Foundation, 2022-204, team member
• 2018–2022: Articulating the Free Market: A Cultural History of the Economic Transformation in Central Europe, 1989-1999. Marie Sklodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship
• 2017: The Student Generation of 1989 in Longitudinal Perspective. Czech Science Foundation 2017–2019, team member

Monographs:

• Veronika Pehe – Joanna Wawrzyniak, eds. Remembering the Neoliberal Turn: Economic Change and Collective Memory in Eastern Europe after 1989. London: Routledge 2023.
• Veronika Pehe, Velvet Retro: Postsocialist Nostalgia and the Politics of Heroism in Czech Popular Culture. New York: Berghan Books, 2020.

Monographs for the general public:

• Veronika Pehe – Apolena Rychlíková – Ondřej Daniel – Lenka Krátká – Michal Lehečka – Vojtěch Ondráček – Jana Patočková – Jaroslav Spurný, Věčná devadesátá. Proměny české společnosti po roce 1989. Brno: CPress, 2023.

Articles & book chapters:

• Veronika Pehe – Petr Kupka. “Legal, Illegal, Either Way Informal: Examining Continuities of Small-Scale Entrepreneurship between Late Socialism and Postsocialism in Czechia.” Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe, Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe, July, pp. 1–21 (2024).
• Veronika Pehe, Totalitarianism as Defensive Memory: Unpacking a Czech Mnemonic Conflict. In: Hanna Haag – Till Hilmar, eds., Erinnerung des Umbruchs, Umbruch der Erinnerung. Die Nachwendeziet im deutschen und ostmitteleuropäischen Gedächtnis. Wiesbaden: Springer, 2024, pp. 225–244.
• Marta Edith Holečková – Veronika Pehe, Anatomie jedné další zdrženlivosti. Dokumenty Charty 77 k zemím třetího světa. Soudobé dějiny XXX, no. 2 (2023): 414–442.
• Veronika Pehe – Joanna Wawrzyniak, “Neoliberalism, Eastern Europe and collective memory: Setting the framework”, in Remembering the Neoliberal Turn: Economic Change and Collective Memory in Eastern Europe after 1989, ed. Veronika Pehe and Joanna Wawrzyniak. London: Routledge 2023, 1–18.
• “Privatization comedies as media of memory of the Czech(oslovak) economic transformation”, in Remembering the Neoliberal Turn: Economic Change and Collective Memory in Eastern Europe after 1989, ed. Veronika Pehe and Joanna Wawrzyniak. London: Routledge 2023, 201–216.
•  Joanna Wawrzyniak – Veronika Pehe, “Memories of the neoliberal turn in comparative perspective: A research agenda”, in Remembering the Neoliberal Turn: Economic Change and Collective Memory in Eastern Europe after 1989, ed. Veronika Pehe and Joanna Wawrzyniak. London: Routledge 2023, 297–307.
• Olga Gontarska – Veronika Pehe, “Films without a viewer: Ukrainian filmmakers and memory of the neoliberal turn in the post-Soviet space”, in Remembering the Neoliberal Turn: Economic Change and Collective Memory in Eastern Europe after 1989, ed. Veronika Pehe and Joanna Wawrzyniak. London: Routledge 2023, 247–263.
• Veronika Pehe, “Poking Fun at the Transformation: Postsocialist TV Satire in the 1990s”, VIEW Journal of European Television History and Culture 11, no. 22 (2022): 7–22.
• Sonja de Leeuw – Dana Mustata – Veronika Pehe ,“Editorial”, VIEW Journal of European Television History and Culture 11, no. 22 (2022): 1–4.
• Veronika Pehe, ‘Commodifying postsocialist cinema: filmmakers and the privatization of the Polish and Czech film industry after 1989’, Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe. 30, no.1 (2022): 11–26.
• Veronika Pehe – Vítězslav Sommer, ‘Introduction: Historicizing postsocialist privatization at the juncture of the cultural and the economic’, Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe. 30, no.1 (2022): 1-9.
• Veronika Pehe, “The Entrepreneur in ‘Transformation Cinema’: Representing the Economic Changes of the 1990s in Poland, Czech Republic, and Slovakia.” East European Politics and Societies 36, no. 2 (2022): 446–464.
• Veronika Pehe, ‘Zlatá devadesátá?’, in Sto studentských evolucí. Vysokoškolští studenti roku 1989. Životopisná vyprávění v časosběrné perspektivě, ed. Miroslav Vaněk et al. (Prague: Academia, 2019), pp. 185–222.
• Veronika Pehe, The Wild 1990s: “Transformation Nostalgia” Among the Czech Student Generation of 1989, East Central Europe 46, no. 1 (2019), pp. 111–134.
• Veronika Pehe, ‘Authenticating the Past: Archives, Secret Police, and Heroism in Contemporary Czech Representations of Socialism’, in Perceptions of Society in Communist Europe: Regime Archives and Popular Opinion, ed. Muriel Blaive (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018), pp. 207–222.
• Veronika Pehe, The Colours of Socialism: Visual Nostalgia and Retro Aesthetics in Czech Film and Television, Canadian Slavonic Papers/Revue Canadienne des Slavistes 57, no. 3-4 (2015), pp. 239–253.
• Veronika Pehe, ‘Drobné hrdinství: vzdor jakožto předmět nostalgie v díle Petra Šabacha a Michala Viewegha’ [Petty Heroism: Resistance as an Object of Nostalgia in the Work of Petr Šabach and Michal Viewegh], Česká literatura 63, no. 3 (2015), pp. 419–434.
• Veronika Pehe, Retro Reappropriations. Responses to “The Thirty Cases of Major Zeman” in the Czech Republic, VIEW: Journal of European Television History and Culture 3, no. 5 (2014), pp. 100–107.