Ongoing projects
Politics of memory and democratization: Czech Republic and Germany (2023–2024, OP JAK/ MSCA Fellowships CZ, main researcher: Klára Pinerová)
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), GA ČR, 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, 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), GA ČR, 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, GA ČR, 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.
Minutes between life and death: Changes in emergency medical service and the professional identity of its employees in the Czech lands 1952–2003, GA ČR, 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).
Negotiating World Research Data: A science diplomacy study. Horizon 2020 ERC Advanced grant, Doubravka Olšáková, 2022–2026
Research data are vital components of any scientific enterprise and the introduction of more inclusive world data exchange practices is a decisive factor, locally and globally, in strengthening capacity for research and innovation and tackling societal challenges. Yet we now comparatively little about what international negotiations have paved the way to the current global system of research data circulation and exchange. NEWORLD@A aims to provide the first comprehensive survey about the sets of science diplomacy exercises that have contributed to shape the current world data exchange system. This study will pioneer transnational research collaborations in order to successfully reconstruct these key historical transitions, also enmeshing non-Western narratives in the study of research data negotiations. Through an original combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, the study will first map existing networking patterns of data circulation and reveal existing imbalances in the world distribution of research data centres. It will then chart the international legal infrastructure that supports this distribution. It will also identify the historical determinants for the shape of world data exchange networks through an investigation of relevant archival documents across the world discussing the relevant negotiations and decision-making processes. They study will focus in particular on interactions between: non-governmental and governmental transnational organizations such as those under the aegis of ICSU and UNESCO; Western and Eastern blocs in the context of the Cold War science race; and Global North and South nations in the uses of research data for development purposes. Shedding new light on how these interactions have shaped the current research data circulation system will finally provide the analysis needed to inform current policy provisions on how to make these systems more inclusive and responsive to global challenges. More information…
National Communism as intellectual tradition and political program in Czechoslovakia (NATCOM). Horizon 2020 Widening Fellowship, Adam Hudek, 2022–2024
What’s the relationship between communist ideology and nationalism? How did national communism shape the political, intellectual and cultural development in Czechoslovakia from 1918 until the second half of 1990? The EU-funded NATCOM project will answer these questions. Specifically, it will study how the complicated relations between communism and nationalism formed the development of the Czechoslovak socialist dictatorship and how the remodelled national communist agenda after 1989 influenced the post communist transition. NATCOM will analyse the nature of communist appeals to national legitimacy and the continuities between national communism and ‘national populism’. The project will focus on the Slovak part of the Czechoslovak Republic and its interactions with the Czech and Hungarian environment. More information…
Science and Emotions: Rethinking Environmental Movements under Communism in Czechoslovakia in the 1970s and 1980s. GA ČR 22-01953S, Doubravka Olšáková, 2022–2024
Economic crisis, crisis of ideological legitimacy and/or growing nationalistic views are considered by the historiography of transition as driving forces heading the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe. As a follow-up to the growing influence of opposition movement Charter 77, specific social groups became “producers rather than consumers of social situations” in the 1970s and 1980s. Opposition actions turned from declarations and publications of documents to social actions.The suggested project will focus on environmental movements and the conflict potential based on the ´praxeology of truth´, moral authority of scientists and researchers in society as well as on the existence of specific „emotional communities“ which were at the core of both movements. Suggested outcomes include three manuscripts, an analytical one, an edited volume resulting from an international workshop and an edited volume of oral history interviews, and two academic papers. More information…
In search of the Postmodern City. Transformation of Prague and Bratislava between 1970 and 2000 (Ideas-Policies-Construction). GA ČR 22-17295S, Matěj Spurný, 2022–2024
The project aims to clarify the historical roots of the current problems of the post-socialist city, taking as an example the development of Prague and Bratislava in the long process of change from the early 1970s to the end of the 20th century. More general research questions concern not only the issue of the disintegration of state socialism and the arrival of post-socialism in both successor states of the former Czechoslovakia, but also the issue of the retreat of modernist planning and the growing influence of post-modernist approaches. Research will focus on the relation between experts’ knowledge of the urban environment and the practice of transforming it, that is, between negotiation and implementation, mainly with regard to transport infrastructure and housing construction. The research team with its interdisciplinary background will, besides the exchange of knowledge with the international scholarly community, conduct broad-based primary research of professional journals of the researched period and sources stored in the Prague and Bratislava archives. More information…
The History of Charter 77 in Domestic Context and Transnational Perspective. GA ČR 22-05450S, Michal Kopeček, 2022–2024
Charter 77 represents one of the most important democratic chapters in Czech as well as Central European history. It is rightly understood as the direct predecessor of the renewed Czechoslovak and Czech democracy after 1989 and in the global context, as one of the most visible human rights organizations of the late 20th century. Despite the prolific extant literature, we still lack a comprehensive and reliable scientific monograph on the history of Charter 77. The goal of this project is a complex historical reconstruction of the origins of Charter 77, its political and social activity during the late communist dictatorship and the beginnings of the new democracy after 1989, as well as its “second” life as the foundational democratic myth of the post-89 republic. The proposed monograph will be based not only on assessing previous research, international comparison and a transnational perspective, but also on additional research of numerous new archival sources that will allow for a constructive revision of the present perspective on Charter 77 and its reception within society. More information…
Czechoslovakia’s Road to the Cold War and the Soviet Bloc. GA ČR 21-33535S, Vít Smetana, 2021–2023
The project enables the proponent to complete years of his research on Czechoslovakia’s international role in 1938-1948 by further necessary probes into the relevant Russian, British and U.S. (as well as Czech) archival funds and to crown this effort with a monograph on Czechoslovakia’s drift to the Soviet bloc that will be published in The Harvard Cold War Studies Book Series. It should refute numerous myths surrounding the topic and help to correct the older narratives entrenched in the alleged fatality of the “Yalta agreements” and other national grievances. The project examines to what extent the Czechoslovak leaders were the real masters of the country’s postwar destiny, what their political strategies on the international scene were and how these interacted with the policies of the Great Powers towards the Central European region. It assesses the risks of securing the country’s future against any repeated German aggression through the alliance with the U.S.S.R. of 1943 and the impact of subsequent concessions and compromises against the country’s genuine independence. 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…
The Democratic Revolution through the Lens of Dagmar Hochová: Making Accessible the Unique Photocollection from 1989-1992. TA ČR TL03000330, Tomáš Zahradníček, 2020–2023
Dagmar Hochová’s photographic heritage, involving a unique collection documenting the centre of Czechoslovak democratic revolution in 1989-1992, will be organized and made accessible. The main output will be an open-access database of images stemming from the period in which the author was a photoreporter, activist and Member of Czech National Council. The collection is unique both in its size and importance. The database will include app. 10,000 images of public scenes as well as the backstage of home and foreign politics, as seen from a deputy bench. The project will create the ground for organization and identification of the collection. This will enable its further use and also prevent its deterioration: the images are difficult to comprehend and require an immediate description. More information…
Genocide, Postwar Migration and Social Mobility: Entangled Experiences of Roma and Jews. GA ČR EXPRO 19-26638X, Kateřina Čapková, 2019–2023
Engaging with debates in Holocaust and genocide studies and social anthropology of marginality, the project approaches the histories of Jewish and Romani communities on the territory of the pre-war Czechoslovakia in comparative perspective. Nazi genocidal policies altered the culture, social makeup, religious outlook, and geography of both victim groups, creating a rupture that fundamentally influenced the subsequent geographic and social mobility of both groups. Only an interdisciplinary approach—bringing together sociology, anthropology and history—can help us create an integrated account of Romani and Jewish experiences in twentieth and twenty-first century Central Europe. A team of multidisciplinary scholars with expertise in Jewish and Romani studies will focus on Jewish and Romani entangled experiences during the war, its aftermath and its current resonances. More information…