Ongoing projects
Urbanity: Inequality, Adaptation and Public Space of Cities in Historical Perspective (OP JAK/MŠMT, Petr Roubal, 2025–2028)
The Urbanita project aims to understand key issues in the development of the urban environment in the Czech context from the Middle Ages to the present. Through historical, sociological, anthropological and geoinformatic research, it offers new insights into the complex issues of urban inequality, adaptability to crises and transformation of public space. The concept of ‚history of the present‘ is the fundamental starting point of the project, which allows to explore the historical causes and contexts of contemporary challenges such as climate change, migration, inequalities and conflicts related to public space. The project works on the premise that a deeper understanding of the past can provide practical models for equitable and inclusive urban planning in contemporary democratic societies.
The Urbanity project is based on three key aims that cover the complex issues of urban development, its historical roots and contemporary challenges: 1) Public space – a site of creativity and conflict, 2) The city as a space of inequality, 3) Threats and resilience of cities. In terms of long-term benefits, the project has the potential not only to strengthen the position of Czech science in the international arena, but also to offer concrete models and recommendations for addressing contemporary problems of urban life. Its results can serve as a basis for public policies aimed at inclusiveness, sustainability and democratisation of urban space. The project is implemented in cooperation with the Institute of Contemporary History of the Czech Academy of Sciences, the Faculty of Arts of Palacký University Olomouc and the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences.
HistoryLab II: Internationalization of the educational platform and expanding its reach in the Czech Republic (Czech Academy of Sciences, Programme for Application Development and Commercialization, Martin Štefek, 2025)
The project builds on the previous successful programme „HistoryLab: a workshop for archives and schools“ supported by the Czech Academy of Sciences, which resulted in the validation of the HistoryLab platform as an innovative tool for teaching history. The new project, with a six-month solution period, focuses on the implementation of key recommendations in the form of increased acquisition activities at the domestic level and the creation of prerequisites for the transfer of know-how at the international level. HistoryLab is an innovative educational tool aimed at supporting research-oriented history teaching and working with historical sources. This tool enables effective links between school teaching and the practice of memory institutions such as archives and museums, and supports the development of historical thinking and digital competences of pupils. The result of the project „HistoryLab II: Internationalization of the educational platform and expansion of its reach in the Czech Republic“ will be a modernized HistoryLab application better prepared for transfer at home and abroad.
Extinct Settlements in the Vicinity of the NPP Dukovany, Their Heritage and Traces in the Cultural Landscape (Czech Academy of Sciences, Regional cooperation project, David Kovařík, 2025-2027)
The aim of the project is to document and present the process of extinction of villages and other settlement units that disappeared in the 1970s to 1990s as a result of the construction and operation of the Dukovany nuclear power plant and the associated construction of the Dalešice and Mohelno reservoirs. The main research themes of the project are: 1) the recollection of the history and significance of the places in the region before their disappearance, 2) the description of the preparation and implementation of the disappearance of the settlements, including the documentation of the process of resettlement of the inhabitants and the process of demolition of the local settlements, 3) the fate of the displaced inhabitants of the disappeared settlements and their activities related to the commemoration of their former homes, 4) the mapping of the surviving relics in the landscape and the documentation of the current state of the sites, including the exploration of the possibilities of their further use. The project is implemented in cooperation with the Institute of Contemporary History of the CAS and the Museum of Vysočina Třebíč.
Privatization of the Housing Stock and Changes in Housing Policy 1990-2006 in Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic (The Czech Science Foundation, Marta Edith Holečková, 2025–2027)
The project will examine how the proces of privatisation of the housing stock took place after 1990. The post-revolutionary period sawunprecedent transfers of property from former socialist ownership to newly emerging and codified property relations. The transformation also significantly affected the housing stock. Ate core of the research will bet he search for answers to questions related to this proces, the everyday nature of privatisation, and the reconstruction of expert and public debates about what the roleof state housing policy should be, and whether it should exist at all. The question returns periodically, changing over time, but always carrying with it a wariness of state intervention and an emphasis on privatism as a key value. Thr research will providean analysis of the origins of privatisation and the articulation of new values associated with private ownership in a series of scholary studies and in the original scientific monograph.
Parliament in the Age of Europeanisation: The Czech Republic and Slovenia (ParlAgE), (The Czech Science Foundation – Slovenian-Czech Lead Agency project, Adéla Gjuričová, 2025–2027)
The aim of the project is a methodological in-depth analysis of the under-researched transformations of Czech and Slovenian national parliaments in the age of Europeanisation (1993-2004) and to examine their context in terms of deliberative decision-making and political representation. The transnational historical approach will focus on how the relationship between the EU and nation-states is represented, constructed and performed in politics. This will provide a better understanding of the aspects necessary for interpreting the challenges the EU has faced in recent years, such as the rise of populist movements, the decline of traditional parties or the growth of Euroscepticism. Harnessing the potential of Europeanization as a comparative analytical tool will fill gaps in parliamentary studies, but also offer multidisciplinary approaches combining historical analysis with DH methods and create comparative models for the study of Europeanization. Its precise understanding and distinguishing from other transnational phenomena will improve the debate on the EU as a common project.
Displaced persons after WW II., the problem of post-war Displaced Children (Czech Academy of Sciences, Prospective Human Resources Support Programme, Jana Kasíková, 7/2024–7/2026)
The research focuses on the issue of post-war displaced persons in the international and Czechoslovak context, framed by long-term migration policy. The project aims to analyze the creation of the institutional (both international and Czechoslovak) network and the organization of care for postwar displaced persons, as well as the daily life and activities of the displaced persons in the period between their liberation and their return. The media coverage of the topic of repatriation and return into society is also explored. Special emphasis is placed on the issue of displaced children (and particularly on the so-called unaccompanied children), their repatriation, and the political and social resonance of this problem.
Deindustrialisation and the new economic order. The regional economy and the Zlín shoe industry between central planning and the market economy (The Czech Science Foundation, Vítězslav Sommer, 2024–2026)
The project examines the economic transformation of the Zlín industry and the associated regional economy in the 1980s and 1990s, as the centrally planned economy gradually declined and the market system was established. The core of the research is a multi-level analysis of the deindustrialization of the shoe industry in Zlín, which had long been the backbone of the regional economy and one of the most important export industries. The project examines deindustrialization at three complementary levels (global, national and regional) and in three key contexts: (1) the global development of the footwear industry, (2) the economic transformation of Czechoslovakia, (3) the transformation of the economy of a particular region. The research team focuses on the structural context of the changes, the actors involved and, in particular, the degree of institutional and personal continuity in the economic sphere. The project emphasizes a broader explanatory framework and focuses on the neglected regional and sectoral dimensions. The aim is to present a new perspective on economic transformation and to show how the contemporary Czech economy has been shaped. More information…
The Role of Central Europe in Ending the Cold War and Shaping the Post-Cold War International Order (The Czech Science Foundation, Matěj Bílý, 2024–2026)
The project examines the role of the three countries of Central Europe – Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland – in ending the Cold War and the subsequent first phase of the post-Cold War international order shaping. Based on the most recent accessible primary sources, it analyses the adaptation strategies of these states and their actors during the key changes between 1988 and 1991, particularly those associated with the transformation of international political, security, and economic structures at the time. The main questions are to what extent the post-Cold War international order – whose echoes still influence the contemporary world – had begun to form before 1989 due to deep structural causes and how much of a role Central Europe as a region played in the expansion of Western, notably American, political, economic, security and cultural influence after the Cold War’s end. The aim is to bring a new empirically based perspective to the current debate on the causes of the emergence of a unipolar world, reflecting mostly the policy of two former Cold War superpowers so far. More information…
Legacy of traditions and cultural pluralism in the life of majority society, national and ethnic minorities in Karlovarsko (Czech Academy of Sciences, project of regional cooperation, Petr Bednařík, 2023–2025)
The project focuses on basic research on post-war population migrations, their characteristics, settlement and re-settlement, including an evaluation of the significance of the inclusion of Karlovarsko among the preferred border regions, the creation of settlement entities, their adaptation and integration into the new majority society, in which cultural dialogue was manifested. The project will focus on capturing the contemporary history of Karlovy Vary and the narrower region (the area of the municipality of Karlovy Vary with extended scope) in the years 1945-2025 with an emphasis on historical development and the current position – of national / ethnic minorities and foreigners as important parts of the local society, which in recent years has been shaping and participating in the life of the region for decades. The research aims to find out and document how a new majority society was created in this predominantly newly settled region and how ethnic minorities established themselves in this environment in the post-war period. It will process the new cultural traditions of the majority and minorities. The research focuses on two areas: 1) maps the issue of cultural pluralism and dialogue between the local ethnicities and describes the role and influence of the ruling political systems in Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic on the creation of national and minority politics, 2) describes and presents with concrete examples the current significance of the newly created regional traditions, in which today’s Karlovarska society participates, made up of a nationally diverse and multiculturally rich composition of the population, in which, in addition to the descendants of the original non-displaced Germans and Czech old settlers, the majority of residents are mainly residents of several generations recruited from post-war settlers and settlers.
Politics of memory and democratization: Czech Republic and Germany (OP JAK/MSCA Fellowships, Klára Pinerová, 2023–2025)
The aim of the research project is to analyze the history of organizations of political prisoners in the Czech Republic and Germany in the years 1989-2019. The achievement of a consensus about the past, which is one of the six criteria is one of the six criteria for the consolidation of new democracies. The project focuses on the analysis of the polarized view of the past on the example of the activity of interest groups of political prisoners and their descendants as important actors of public history after 1989. These organizations appeared on the political scene as distinctive and powerful memory groups and managed to achieve some of their main goals very soon after the revolutionary year of 1989. However, their activities not only helped society cope with a difficult past, but also divided society with their radical views on communism. The project aims to explore these organizations as participants in public life and the formation and maintenance of collective memory, as well as how these associations sought to emphasize and use or promote their collective memory and interpretation of history in the political process and contribute to the democratization of society. Funded by the European Union. More information…
The progressive against the conservative? Political decision-making and its actors in Czechoslovakia (1960–1976) (The Czech Science Foundation, Oldřich Tůma, 2023–2025)
The purpose and objective of the project is to analyze the functioning of the political system in Czechoslovakia during the period of a major crisis of the Communist regime between 1967 and 1970, but with significant overlaps into the prehistory and posthistory of the Prague Spring. The project will be based on a deconstruction of existing interpretation schemes and the language of the narrative, a prosopographical and actors-oriented reconstruction, and the construction of a model showing how the system was working. The project will examine the formation of the language of political and media discourse and the use of the progressive/conservative dichotomy, particularly with respect to the communication of reform programmes and problems of identification with the regime ́s policy in the past. It will focus on political actors and their backgrounds, careers, attitudes, practices, interests, disputes, interactions and networking, aiming to clarify the modus operandi of the regime ́s power centers and the political decision-making and political mechanics at different levels of the system. More information…
Serving the homeland as a source of national identity. Identification, documentation and presentation of historical sources for the institute of compulsory military service in the Czech lands (1868–2004) (NAKI III DH23P03OVV054, Jiří Hlaváček, 3/2023–12/2027)
The aim of the project, which combines basic and applied research in the social sciences and humanities, is to identify, document and present various types of historical sources on the history of the institute of compulsory military service in the Czech lands in the years 1868–2004. The main objective is to create a specialized professional and publicly accessible electronic information database that offers a detailed chronology of compulsory military service in the context of contemporary political, social and cultural frameworks, a unique glossary (including army language), bibliographies and links to other existing resources, and based on a specialized thesaurus and metadata across thematic categories and sources of an interdisciplinary nature (including audiovisual) with the possibility of comparing the results on the interactive timeline of 1868–2004, using permanent references to digitized document collections stored in Czech and foreign memory institutions. It will also include a general typology of historical sources on the issue, including an overview of their identifying features, access options and recommended critical procedures for working with them. More information…
Technocratic Environmentalism across the Iron Curtain: Czechoslovak experts in the UNECE (1950s-1980s) (The Czech Science Foundation, Jiří Janáč, 2023–2025)
International bureaucracies operating at the global level play an important role in assessing and mitigating the human pressure on the environment and in the climate change debate. Apolitical, transnational expertise seems to hold the key to the problem, describing it as a purely technical issue. But before becoming global, this technocratic environmentalism emerged on a European level. Since early 1950s, United Nations Economic Commission for Europe worked on a pan- European response to the ecological crisis, uniting experts from various fields and both sides of the Iron Curtain. They attempted to harmonise economic development and environmental protection. This project focuses on the role of experts from socialist Czechoslovakia in the formation of this pan-European response in the committees of UNECE in 1960s–1980s and argues that they were the link between emerging global environmentalism and state-socialist technocratic environmentalism. Sharing the ideology of technocratic internationalism, they helped design environmental agenda and expertise both home and abroad. More information…
Czechoslovak Diplomacy and the Arab-Israeli Conflict from 1948–1989 (The Czech Science Foundation, Eva Taterová, 2023–2025)
The grant project aims to analyze the approach of Czechoslovak diplomacy to the main actors of the Arab-Israeli conflict (Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestinian nationalization movements and Syria) from 1948-1989 based on the historiographical and methodological premises of the New Cold War history. The research will be conducted in the relevant archives in the Czech Republic, Israel, Great Britain, and the USA, and it is designed to develop the previous research activities of Eva Taterova, the principal investigator, focused especially on Czechoslovak-Israeli Cold War relations. The intended research shall firstly reconstruct the diplomatic relations of Czechoslovakia to the main Arab actors of the conflict and then make a case study examining the position of Czechoslovakia as a satellite state of the Soviet Union analyzing the activities in the Middle East not only through the perspective of East-West rivalries but also in terms of North-South global relations. More information…
From Student Internationalism to Erasmus: Globalization and Europeanization of Student Life since 1945 (GAČR-SNF, Mikuláš Pešta, 2023–2025)
The project concerns with students’ political and social life in post-war Europe. It will focus on student organizations as platforms that channelled the student agentivity. The Swiss-Czech team examines international student federations on both sides of the ‘Iron Curtain’ as well as national student unions in both countries. While the operation of these organizations was certainly affected by the Cold War ideological clashes, this project studies also their interactions, cooperation and exchange, shared imagery, trans-bloc transfers of knowledge, and creation of a European academic space, questioning the impermeability of the ‘Iron Curtain’. The student organizations are viewed as transnational spaces, centres of knowledge production. The international unions were hubs where students met and influenced each other. These interactions formed career and life trajectories of several generations of student leaders. The project pays particular attention to the importance of students from the Global South who were bringing fresh perspectives beyond the East-West divide. More information…
The Research Group for Historical Transformation Studies (Lumina quaeruntur, Veronika Pehe, 2022–2027)
As part of the project „Postsocialist Transformation as Historical Process and Social Experience“, The Research Group for Historical Transformation Studies will develop a research agenda for the study of the history of postsocialist transformations in the Czech Republic/Czechoslovakia in a broader transnational context. Its innovation lies in approaching economic and political phenomena from a cultural and social historical perspective. The group’s research will focus on three interconnected areas of transformation: 1) mental worlds; 2) worlds of work; 3) urban/rural environments. It will ask how the ideological aims of the transformation project were articulated, lived, and squared with everyday experience by different social groups. Analysing transformation processes at the nexus of the categories of gender, class, and space, the project will take a bottom-up approach that has so far only partially been applied to the history of the post-1989. transformations. More information…
Minutes between life and death: Changes in emergency medical service and the professional identity of its employees in the Czech lands 1952–2003 (The Czech Science Foundation, Jiří Hlaváček, 2023–2025)
The project focuses on the analysis and identification of processes in the development of emergency medical service (EMS) and the professional identity of its employees in the Czech lands from 1952, when professional pre-hospital emergency care was taken over by the state, to 2003 when EMS transformed into regional contributory organizations. The aim is to describe EMS institutionalization, professionalization and modernization by comparing the official discourse (legislation and departmental documents) and actors’ perspectives (witnesses’ reflections) through regional micro-historical surveys. Interdisciplinary research combines history of medical science, contemporary history, memory and identity studies. The data will be collected and processed using the methods of classical historiography (archival research), historical anthropology (discursive, narrative and symbolic analysis) and social anthropology (qualitatively focused narrative and semi-structured interviews). More information…
Towards Illiberal Constitutionalism in East Central Europe: Historical Analysis in Comparative and Transnational Perspectives (VW Stiftung, Michal Kopeček, 2021–2025)
In recent years, the rise of authoritarian governments in East Central Europe and far right and populist movements across Europe has sparked concern that the liberal democratic order established after 1989 is falling apart. The project team will attempt to answer the question why illiberal constitutional architects of today were also in the front lines of the democratization movement in the 1980s and of the liberal transformation of the 1990s. They aim to introduce a historical, interdisciplinary, practice-oriented and comparative perspective to academic engagement with illiberal and authoritarian challenges to constitutional democracy. The project stretches from the post-war era with emphasis on the period since 1968, comprising the era of late state socialism, post-communist liberal transformation, into the present day. The project team consists of historians, scholars of law and sociology of law as well as political scientists. While all of the case studies share the same general approach, the theory and methodology employed by each will vary in order to adapt to the specificity of the local conditions. The following case studies are planned: – an investigation of references to the interwar regimes and their institutional setup in the political discourse of Poland, Czechia, Slovakia and Hungary. – a study on the intellectual sources of the rejection of liberal constitutionalism in Poland. – an examination of post-1989 conflicts over the far-right and the policing of the boundaries of democracy by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution in Eastern Ger-many. – a study of the normalization of illiberal constitutionalism – a tracing down of the various critiques of „juristocracy“ and „judicialization“ of politics. The project team supports junior researchers to focus on research on this challenge, to form a transnational network and to prepare the ground for their long-term academic engagement in the field. More information…