Institute of Contemporary History

Professional focus:

• History of post-socialism, social history

Education:

• 2016-2020: Charles University, Faculty of Arts, Czech History (Ph.D.)
• 2010-2016: Charles University, Faculty of Arts, Department of Economic and Social History (M.A.)

Occupation:

• 2019-present: researcher, Institute of Contemporary History of the Czech Academy of Sciences

Foreign stays, internships, scholarships:

• 2019 Research stay at the Historical Institute of the Slovak Academy of Sciences in Bratislava, scholarship of the National Scholarship Programme of the Slovak Republic, supervisor Dr. Adam Hudek. Topic: roots of economic reforms in Slovakia.
• 2018 Research stay at Universität Wien (Aktion Österreich scholarship), supervisor prof. Philipp Ther. Topic: the Czechoslovak footprint at the International Institute for Systems Analysis (IIASA) in the 1970s and 1980s.

Grant and research projects:

• 2023–2027. Member of the research team of the project „Post-socialist transformation as a historical process and social experience“ (Lumina Quarentur project, principal investigator Veronika Pehe)
• 2020-2021. Collaborator on the research project of Masaryk University in Brno and the Institute for Contemporary History of the CAS in Prague „Transformation of Czech Enterprises: socialist enterprises in the market economy“ (GA ČR 20-23131S)
• 2019-2021. Co-principal investigator of the GACR project „The Moving Borders of Dictatorship in the Light of Complaints and Anonymous Letters of Czechoslovak Citizens between 1948 and 1989“ (GAČR 19-02794S, principal investigator doc. Tomáš Vilímek)
• 2017 – 2018 researcher of the project „Czechoslovak Discussions on Ownership in the Period of Late Socialism and Early Transformation“ (Internal Grant of the Faculty of Arts, principal investigator M. Kopeček)
• 2015 – 2017 collaborator on the research project „Expert Roots of Post-Socialism.
• 2017 collaborator on the research project „Neoliberalism and Political Culture, 1980-2008“ (project History Faculty, University of Oxford, supervisor: Prof. David Priestland, St. Edmund Hall, Oxford)
• 2015 collaborator on the research project „Science and University Institutions 1945 – 1968“ (GAČR project, investigator. Mgr. Jakub Jareš)
• 2014 collaborator on the research project „Social Policy in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia 1939 – 1945“ (GAČR project, investigator: J. A. Comenius University), leader. Jakub Rákosník

Monographs:

• RAMEŠ, Václav: Market without adjectives or economic democracy? Disputes over ownership transformation in post-revolutionary Czechoslovakia (Trh bez přívlastků, nebo ekonomickou demokracii? Spory o podobu vlastnické transformace v porevolučním Československu), Praha: Ústav pro soudobé dějiny AV ČR, 2021, 356 pages, ISBN 978-80-7285-258-1.

Articles and studies:

• VALŮŠEK, David – ŠEVEČEK, Ondřej – SOMMER, Vítězslav (eds.), History of the City of Zlín 2. The Modern City, Statutární město Zlín, Zlín 2023. (author of chapters: 1989, pp. 288-293 and The Municipality and its Administration in the 1990s, pp. 308-314)
• RAMEŠ, Václav: Individual service providing as an economic practice in the Czechoslovak communist dictatorship, In: Moderní dějiny, Historický ústav AV ČR, 1/2023, p. 207—230.
• VILÍMEK, Tomáš – RAMEŠ, Václav: Moveable boundaries of dicatorship in the perspective of citizens‘ complaints (Pohyblivé hranice diktatury ve světle stížností občanů), In: Soudobé dějiny, 1/2022, s. 17—42.
• RAMEŠ, Václav – KOPEČEK, Michal: From socialist management theory to neoliberal managerialism. In: KOPEČEK, Michal (ed.): Architects of Long Change. Expert roots of post-socialism in Czechoslovakia, Argo, Prague 2019, pp. 155-184.
• RAMEŠ, Václav: Economists and economic research in the period of normalisation. Czechoslovak, Slovak and Czechoslovak History of the 20th Century. Proceedings of the International Conference, University of Hradec Králové 2019, 223-229.
• RAMEŠ, Václav: From market socialism to privatization. The Czechoslovak economists and the new expert critique of socialist economy in times of normalization, In: Prague Economic and Social History Papers, č. 1, roč. 2019, s. 21-46.
• RAMEŠ, Václav. Post-Communist Europe as a vanguard of social development? In: Studia Historica Brunensia, vol. 2018, no. 2, pp. 193-207.
• RAMEŠ, Václav: (Post)socialist economists as an object of historical research. Current state and perspectives, In: Contemporary History, no. 3, 2017, pp. 389-402.

Conferences and workshops:

• Conference „The circulation of ideas and practices regarding workplace democracy in Europe and beyond, from WWII to the present“, Université d’Évry Paris-Saclay, 28 – 29 September 2023. Paper: Czechoslovakia – How practices of economic democracy helped remove the political dominance of the Communist Party (1989).
• Workshop „Industries, Institutions and Everyday Cultures in Transformation“, 23 October 2020 (online), Prague. The Hannah Arendt Institut für Totalitarismusforschung (Dresden). Paper: ‚Between market without adjectives and economic democracy. The impact of different political visions on organizin the Czechoslovak privatization“.
• Conference „Beyond 1989. Hopes and disillusions after revolutions (a global approach), CEFRES, FF UK Prague 6 – 7 December 2019. Paper „The 1989 as an opportunity for a new economic order. Expectations and disillusionments in the Czechoslovak post-communist ownership transformation“.
• Conference „Democratic Revolution 1989. Thirty Years After“, Institute of Social Sciences of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Senate, 6-8 November 2019, Prague. Paper „Self-governing councils as an instrument of revolution and an obstacle to transformation“.
• Conference „Czech and Czechoslovak History of the 20th Century XIV“, FF UHK, Hradec Králové, 2 – 4 April 2019.
• Conference „The Prague Spring 50 Years Later“, ÚSD AVČR, 13 – 15 June 2018, Prague. Contribution Economic reform in post-89 Czechoslovak politics.
• Seminar „Historicizing Neoliberalism“, Max Planck Sciences Po Center on Coping with Instability in Market Societies, 16-18 May 2018, Paris (presentation of dissertation)
• Conference „Rethinking Twentieth Century Europe. Decays, splits and endings“, Institute of History, Faculty of Arts, MUNI, Matica Moravská, Brno, 9 – 10 April 2018. Post-Communist Europe as a vanguard of social development?“
• Conference „Czech and Czechoslovak History of the 20th Century XIII“, FF UHK, Hradec Králové, 4 – 5 April 2018. EU CSAV and preconditions for the implementation of economic transformation“.
• Workshop „Studientag 1968“, 15-17 February 2018, Prague (Imre Kertesz Kolleg Jena, FFUK), paper „Does the Third Way Lead to the Third World? A Shadow of the 68’s Economic Reform in the Czechoslovak Post-communist Transformation“ (Transformations of 1960s Reform Concepts during the Normalization).
• Congress of Czech Historians 13-15 September 2017, Olomouc. Paper „Employee Privatization and Political Identities in the Post-Communist Transformation“