Institute of Contemporary History

Research interests:

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

Education:

• 2019-2024, 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:

• 2024, Institute of Contemporary History, Ljubljana, visiting fellow
• 2024, Leibniz Centre for Contemporary History Potsdam, visiting fellow
• 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:

• „Discourses of Moral and Ecological Crisis in the Czech Post-Socialist Transformation.“ East Central European Crisis Discourses in the Twentieth Century. Routledge, 2024. 368-391.
• “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.

Conference and workshops:

• ‘Esotericism in Postsocialist Czechoslovakia: Media, Politics, Science’, Sciences, Ideologies, and Religions in 20^th Century Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe, Athény, Jun 2024
• ‘Environmental Grief Under Socialism? Narratives of Ecological Crisis in Czechoslovakia in the 1980s’ (in Czech), How to Narrate Climate Change and Environmental Grief? Poetics of Climate Change in Contemporary Literature and Drama, Institute of Czech Literature, Prague, Dec 2023
• ‘Politics for All–or Horoscope: Occult Television Programmes and Postsocialist Transformation’, Occultism and Popular Culture in Europe, Kodaň, Nov 2023
• ‘Children of Paradise: Technology, Nature and Time in Czechoslovakia 1970–2000’, Neue Forschung zur Osteuropäischen Geschichte in München und Oxford, Mnichov, Apr 2023
• ‘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