People

Julian is a Ph.D. Candidate in Art History at the University of Illinois Chicago with a concentration in Central and Eastern European Studies. Julian is interested in challenging modes of thought surrounding the predominance of art historical methodologies that prioritise conceptions of art from a Western European point of view. His research investigates Habsburg-born artists and their roles in national identity creation in the 19th and 20th centuries, drawing on Critical Theory, Jewish Studies, and the History of Graphic Design. His research has been supported by the Fulbright-Hays DDRA and the UIC Provost Graduate Research Award. He is the first dual degree student to graduate from Pacific Northwest College of Art in 2019, where he received an MA in Critical Studies and an MFA in Visual Studies. He received his BA in Studio Art from Linfield College in May 2016.

Juliane is a postdoctoral researcher at Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. Her interests focus on transnational artistic exchange across Europe during the Cold War, with a particular interest on the medium of exhibition as a platform of visibility. She is working on a monograph on this topic, with particular attention to the circulations between Central Europe and Southern Europe in the 1970s. As a visiting research fellow at the Centre for Modern Art & Theory, she is developing a project on drawing exhibitions in Czechoslovakia and their related international networks. She is member of several projects and groups, including Equipo Comunicación: Publishing, Cultural Criticism and Anti-Francoism, 1969–1979 and the Spanish Research Network on Central and Eastern Europe (REIECO).

In her research, Marta concentrates on the questions of identity, whether political, national or gender, and its relation to modern art and design. Currently she examines this topic looking at exhibitionary cultures and the representation of interwar Czechoslovakia at world’s fairs. As a child, Marta wanted to be an artist and later a fashion designer. She soon recognised this was not meant to be and found her strength in the theory and history of fields. She still occasionally enjoys painting and her sawing skills came useful when making face masks during the pandemic. Marta also likes spending time with her boys and her erratic dog, cycling, hiking and reading.

Valéria is a Ph.D. student and a researcher at the Department of Art History at Masaryk University working on the grant project ‚Beyond the Village. Folk Cultures as Agents of Modernity, 1918–1945.‘ She studied art history at the Comenius University in Bratislava, after which she continued her master’s studies at the Masaryk University in Brno and the Academy of Arts, Architecture & Design in Prague. She specialises in the modern art and visual culture of the 20th century in Central Europe. In her dissertation, she focuses on vernacular photography of interwar Czechoslovakia. Currently, she is a junior curator of modern painting at the Slovak National Gallery and an external curator of photography at the Slovak Museum of Design.

Radu (he/his) is a Registered Architect in New York, urban planner and educator, currently a Doctoral Fellow at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology ETH – Zürich. His doctorate focuses on the negotiated architectural modernity emerging through the physical relocation of buildings in the early 20th c. in central and eastern Europe. This work builds on research and teaching positions he has previously held, including Harvard University’s Appleton Fellowship, Robert A.M. Stern’s Fellowship and the University of Wisconsin’s Architecture Fellowship. He has previously practiced with Diller Scofidio + Renfro (New York), Herzog & de Meuron (Basel) and Dogma (Brussels). He graduated with a Master in Architecture with Distinction and a Master in Urban Planning with Distinction from Harvard University and pursued undergraduate studies at the Architectural Association in London.

Cosmin is postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Art History. He leads an individual project financed by the Czech Grant Agency about the formation of the architectural heritage and the first art history writings in Romania, Serbia, Bulgaria, Bukovina, between 1860 and 1930. He has a Ph.D. in art history from the University of Birmingham about restorations and writings about architectural monuments in Romania in the 19th and 20th centuries. He is more generally interested in how architecture gains meaning for different persons, social groups and political discourses. Cosmin is also affiliated with New Europe College, Bucharest where he is member of a research group looking at the environmental history of modern Romania.

Alena lectures about the history of modern art at the Departement of ARt History at Masaryk University. She studied Art History and Italien at the Charles University in Prague, then she worked as a curator of the Collection of Modern and Contemporary Art in the National Gallery Prague. Her research focuses on modern Czech art and its relations with European art. She is the author of thematic exhibitions e.g. about the grotesqueness in Czech Art, Expressionism and Futurism and monographic exhibitions about Otto Gutfcreund, Josef Čapek, Růžena Zátková. She is currently researching the relationship between image and word in modern art.

Matthew is extra-ordinary professor of art history at Masaryk University. His interests focus on two main areas: the cultural politics of art and architecture in central Europe from the late nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth, and questions in aesthetics, neuroscience and the historiography of art. Previous books include: The Vienna School of Art History (2013), Liberalism, Nationalism and Design Reform in the Habsburg Empire (2020, with Nóra Veszprémi and Markian Prokopovych) and The Museum Age in Austria-Hungary (2021, also with Nóra and Markian). He Is currently researching modernist architecture and Catholic culture in interwar central Europe.

Veronika is a research associate in the grant project Czechs and the Colonial World: Design and Visual Culture after 1848, where she contributes to the research on material culture and the export of Czech projects abroad. Her scholarly work focuses on 20th-century architecture and design within broader social and political contexts. She is the co-editor of the publication The Future is Hidden in the Present: Architecture and Czech Politics 1945–1989 (2021) and the author of the book Prague Castle on the Path to Communist Utopia (1948–1968) (2019). At the Academy of Art, Architecture and Design in Prague, she participates in the research project Places of Creativity, which focuses on industrial design education after 1850. In her teaching, she primarily concentrates on 20th-century design.

Anna Řičář Libánská (she/her) is an activist and Ph.D. candidate at the Center for Ibero-American Studies, Faculty of Philosophy, Charles University. She is focusing on representations of Indigenous Peoples of Americas in Czech culture throughout history; representations of gender, the body and otherness; or colonialism and its contemporary reflections. She draws on feminist and decolonial theories. She is also affiliated with Centre for African Studies (Faculty of Arts) where she is currently working as an editor on a collaborative translations of decolonial feminist texts into Czech.

Julia is a postdoctoral researcher on the collaborative grant project ‘Continuity/Rupture: Art and Architecture in Central Europe 1918–1939‘, where she works on the role of regional cultures in modern Central European art and visual culture. Her wider research focuses on art and design in twentieth-century Central Europe with a particular interest in questions of gender and minority representation. Additionally, Julia works on satirical magazines, caricature and cartoons, and is currently co-writing a graphic novel as part of The Lausanne Project, which she also co-convenes. She is also a lead on the project ‘Creativity from Vienna to the world: transatlantic exchanges in design and pedagogy’ and an editorial board member of Art East Central and the Journal of Austrian-American History.