Institute of Contemporary History

Research interests:

• History of neoliberalism, environmental history, history of popular culture, history of occult thought, history of late state socialism and post-socialism in Czechoslovakia and East-Central Europe

Education:

• 2019-2023, University of Oxford, Wadham College, History (DPhil.)
• 2018-2019, University of Oxford, St Edmund’s Hall, Modern European History (MSt.)
• 2014-2018, Charles University, Faculty of Arts, History–English (Bc.)

Employment:

• Since 2023: postdoctoral researcher, Institute of Contemporary History, Czech Academy of Sciences

Study and Research Stays Abroad:

• 2022, Sciences Po, Centre d’études européennes, visiting doctoral student
• 2017, Aarhus Universitaät, Erasmus exchange

Research projects:

• 2022-2027, member of the Research Group for Historical Transformation Studies (PI: Veronika Pehe, prémie Lumina Quaeruntur Fellowship)

Refereed articles:

• “A ‚Right to Sadness‘: Late Socialist Environmentalism between Technocracy and Romanticism and the Czech Nature Writer Jaromír Tomeček.” Kontradikce 6, no. 2 (2023): 67–90.
• “’The future is in your hands‘: temporality and the neoliberal self in the Czech voucher privatization. ” Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe 30, no. 1 (2022): 83-99. DOI: 10.1080/25739638.2022.2044616

Conference and workshops:

• ‘From Ploughs to Computers: Socialist Visions of a Postindustrial Age’, Futures in the History of Deindustrialization, Bologna, Oct 2022
• ‘Gaia, Kafka and the Markets: The End of an Omniscient Human and the Veiling of Neoliberal Technocracy in Czechoslovakia’, Transforming State Socialism in East-Central Europe Historical Sociology of the Long Change, Warsaw, Sep 2022
• ‘How to Hold a Crocodile: Writing History of Nature and Neoliberalism after 1989’. Rethinking Intellectual History in East Central Europe. Transformation of Identities in Central Europe and Politicisation of the Masses, Bratislava, Sep 2022
• ‘Nature of Markets: From Socialist Technocracy to Spontaneous Order’, Neoliberal Environmental Thought History Workshop, Max-Planck-Institut, Berlin, Aug 2022
• ‘Toxic Past, Organic Future: Nature and the Markets in Czechoslovakia around 1989’, Collegium Carolinum Annual Conference, Nov 2021
• ‘The 1990s On Demand: An Internet Guide to Czech Postsocialism’, European History Reloaded Symposium, Utrecht, Oct 2021
• ‘Sulphurous Atmosphere: Forests, Factories and Czechs after 1989’, Worlds of Related Coercions at Work – European Labour History Network, Vienna, Aug-Sep 2021
• ‘Harvest of Light: Sociotechnical Imaginary of the Dukovany Nuclear Power Plant; Microhistories of Socialism, Pula, Aug 2021
• ‘Time and the City on Late Socialist Czechoslovak TV’, Temporality and Material Culture under Socialism, Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut, Jul 2021
• ‘“The Future Is in Your Hands”: Privatization in Czechoslovakia and the Making of a Neoliberal Self’, Industries, Institutions and Everyday Cultures in Transformation, Hannah Arendt Institute Dresden and Institute of Contemporary History of the Czech Academy of Sciences, online, Oct 2020
• ‘“Years of unrestrained freedom”: Post-1989 history in the Czech Public Sphere’ (in Czech), History in Public Sphere, Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes, online, Oct 2020
• ‘Auto, atom, Africa: Technical Progress and Colonial Imagination in Czechoslovakia’ (in Czech), Africa in Imagination of Countries without Colonies, Centre for African Studies, Charles University, Prague, Sep 2020
• ‘“Comfort Is Paradise”: Late Socialist and Neoliberal Sociotechnical Imaginaries in Czechoslovakia’, Locating and Timing Matters: Significance and agency of STS in emerging worlds, European Association for the Study of Science and Technology, online, Aug 2020
• ‘Prague–“City of the Future”: Temporalities of the Late Socialist Urban Space’, Cities in the USSR and the Eastern Bloc: Urbanization, Ecology and the Municipal Economy, University Nuremberg-Erlangen, Feb 2020
• ‘“We are Buying the Future”: Voucher Privatization in Postsocialist Czechoslovakia’, Beyond 1989: Hopes and Disillusions after Revolutions, Centre francais de recherche en sciences sociales, Prague, Dec 2019
• ‘Capitalism is the New Red. A Czechoslovak Revolutionary Ideal of Democratic Self- Organisation Transformed’, Negotiating Hierarchies, 13th Annual Graduate Conference in European History, Central European University, Budapest, Apr 2019