Institute of Contemporary History

Professional experience:

• 01/09/2019 – present Assistant professor at the Department of General History, Faculty of Arts, Comenius University Bratislava

Education:

• 01/09/2012 – 18/08/2017 Doctor of Philosophy Degree (General History), Department of General History, Faculty of Arts, Comenius University Bratislava, Dissertation: Discourse Analysis of the British Historiography on the Origins of the First World War, Supervisor: Prof. Eduard Nižňanský, PhD.
• 01/09/2007 – 31/08/2012. Bachelor and Master studies at the Faculty of Arts, Comenius University Bratislava, study programme: History

Scholarships and Research fellowships:

• March 2024 – August 2024   Research Center for the History of Transformations (RECET), University of Vienna, Austria, under supervision of Prof. Philipp Ther
• June 2022 – July 2022   Institute of Contemporary History, Ljubljana, Slovenia
• October 2020 – March 2021   Imre Kertész Kolleg, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität, Jena, Germany
• 01/09/2019 – 28/02/2020   Institute of Contemporary History, The Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague, Czech Republic
• 01/06/2018 – 31/07/2018   Open Society Archives, Budapest Visegrad Fund scholarship, Budapest, Hungary

Invited Lectures:

• Institute of Contemporary History, Ljubljana: Lecture title: ““To put it simply, we should have been more empathetic, and kind” Memory politics and the post-socialist transformation in Slovakia” – 10 June 2022.

Publications:

Peer-reviewed chapters in edited volumes

• Matej Ivančík, Liberal-democratic geographic imagination in post-socialist Slovakia, or “in no way can we be compared with Bulgaria, Romania, Yugoslavia or Russia.” In: Re-Imagining Space and Society in Central and Eastern Europe. New Geographies of Politics, History and Culture after 1989, Mark Bassin and Per Anders Rudling (eds.), Berlin: De Gruyter 2026.
• Matej Ivančík, Transformations of Democracy. In: The Routledge Handbook of 1989 and the Great Transformation, Rosamund Johnston, Jannis Panagiotidis, Magdalena Baran-Szołtys, Anna Calori, Thục Linh Nguyễn Vũ, Sheng Peng, Anastasya Schaht, Philipp Ther (eds.), Routledge 2025, 371-381.
• Matej Ivančík, A recurring bone of contention: The memory politics of Slovakia’s economic transformation. In: Veronika Pehe – Joanna Wawrzyniak (eds.) Remembering the Neoliberal Turn: Economic Change and Collective Memory in Eastern Europe After 1989, Routledge, 2023.
• Matej Ivančík, Abandoning the Ethos of Change: The Prague Spring Portrayal in the Western Liberal Democratic Press. In Ľubor Matejko and Matej Ivančík, eds. Narratives of Remembrance. 1968: The Past Present and the Present Past. (Bologna and Bratislava: Vydavateľstvo Univerzity Komenského v Bratislave, 2020).

Co-authored monographs

• Szabina Kerényi, Jiří Navrátil, and Matej Ivančík, Civil Society in Central Europe: The Leftist Perspective (Prague: Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, 2020).

Peer reviewed articles in scientific journals

• Matej Ivančík, Re-emergence of the Language of History in Postsocialist Slovakia. On the Concept of Historical Democratic Imagination After 1989. In Historický časopis, 2024, Vol. 72, No. 5, p. 925-946.
• Matej Ivančík, Rethinking Intellectual History in East-Central Europe: Capitalising on Ecclecticism (An Introduction to a special issue). In Forum Historiae, 2023, Vol. 17, No. 2, p. 1-9.
• Matej Ivančík, From Democrats to Liberals: The Ambiguous Origins of Liberals and Civil Society in Slovakia after 1989. In Soudobé dějiny, 2021, Vol. 28, No. 3, p. 706-724
• Matej Ivančík, State of Grace: A Probe into Understanding Democratic Trust and Legitimacy through the Eyes of the Public Against Violence. In Forum Historiae, 2021, Vol.15, No. 2, p. 123-138.

Reviews and review essays

• Matej Ivančík, A Post-Socialist Revision of Neoliberal Hegemony. Why the Experience of Central and Eastern Europe Matters beyond Its Borders. Review essay of: Philipp Ther. How the West lost the Peace: The Great Transformation Since Cold War. Polity, 2023. In Soudobé dějiny, 2024, Vol. 31, No. 3, 805-814.
• Matej Ivančík, Mosty technokratických kontinuít v Československu. Od konca stalinizmu do kapitalistickej transformácie. Review essay of: Michal Kopeček et al. Architekti dlouhé změny: Expertní kořeny postsocialismu v Československu. Praha: Argo – ÚSD AV ČR, 2019; Vítězslav Sommer et al. Řídit socialismus jako firmu: Technokratické vládnutí v Československu, 1956 – 1989. Praha: Lidové noviny – ÚSD AV ČR, 2019. In Soudobé dějiny, 2021, Vol. 28, No. 1, p. 224-231.
• Matej Ivančík, Rethinking Forgotten Thoughts. Review essay of: Onur Acaroglu, Rethinking Marxist Approaches to Transition: A Theory of Temporal Dislocation. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2021. In Contradictions: A Journal for Critical Thought, 2022, Vol. 6, No. 2, p. 174-180.

Popularising monographs and articles

• Matej Ivančík and Sandra Plaskoňová eds. Tie roky deväťdesiate! Bratislava: Brak, 2025 [FORTHCOMING, publication in June 2025]
• Matej Ivančík, Ekonomická transformácia na Slovensku a aktéri formovania jej kultúrnej pamäti. In Kapitál, 2022, Vol. 6, No. 8.

Peer reviewed conference papers

• Matej Ivančík, From Revolution to Establishment: Impasses of Democracy in Slovakia after 1989, Panel: What democracy in 1989. BASEES, Robinson College, University of Cambridge, 4-8 April 2022
• Matej Ivančík, Problém výskumu dejín demokracie na Slovensku po roku 1989, Panel: Postsocialismus jako historické téma. Výzkum českých a slovenských dějin po roce 1989. 12. sjezd českých historiků, Univerzita J. E. Purkyně, Ústí nad Labem, 20. – 22. September 2022.

Organisation and Co-organisation of International Conferences and Workshops

Organiser:

• 2-4/9 2022 Rethinking Intellectual History in East-Central Europe: Transformations of Identities in Central Europe and Politicisation of the Masses, Comenius University Bratislava, Faculty of Arts. In cooperation with the Institute of History, Slovak Academy of Sciences.

Co-organiser:

• 11-12/9 2023 History of Political and Social Thought – workshop, Central European University, Budapest – co-chairing the panel “Social Thought” with Zsófia Lóránd
• 17-19/7 2023 History of Science Meets Intellectual History – workshop, Masaryk Institute and Archive of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Institute of Contemporary History – Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague
• 24-25/3 2023 Lessons on Resilience from Literary Studies and Intellectual History: Feminist Pedagogies for a Post-Pandemic Future in the Western Balkans – workshop, University of Belgrade, Serbia

Other:

• 05/07 2023 Memory Studies Association congress – Panel: Remembering the Neoliberal Turn: Economic Change and Collective Memory in Eastern Europe After 1989 (introduction of the edited volume), Newcastle upon Tyne, UK
• 20/10 2022 Transformations of Property in Post-Socialist Eastern Europe: Reconfigurations of Ownership and Alternatives to Private Property – paper: Institutionalizing Property Discourses in an Unhinged Privatization: Economic Transformation in Post-Socialist Slovakia, Jena, Germany
• 29/9 2022 Eastern Enlargement or an All-European Transformation? The 1990s in European Politics – European Information and Research Network on Parliamentary History workshop – panel chair, Ljubljana, Slovenia

Supervising and mentoring activities

• February 2023 – external mentoring and supervision at a Tokyo University of Foreign Studies and Central European University Graduate Workshop for Japanese graduate students: “Concepts of the Public Spheres and the Cold War: Case Studies from the Eastern Bloc”
• Teaching: supervision of multiple bachelor and masters’ programme students since 2019 until present

Public impact:

• Teaching: leading courses on contemporary history, neoliberalism and history of political thought
• Regular and frequent appearances and public discussions: national broadcasting service Slovenská televízia a rozhlas – morning show Dobré ráno, evening discussion Večera s Havranom, etc. (Radio + TV)

Languages:

• Fluent: English, Slovak, Czech. Intermediate: German. Reading skills: Polish, Slovenian