Category Archives: CEFRES Team

Calls for Applications, CEFRES Team, Join us

Job Vacancy | Executive Assistant

CEFRES is…

  • a French public research institution with partnerships throughout Central Europe
  • an international research and administrative team (15 nationalities by 2026), developing cutting edge research projects in the humanities and social sciences
  • twenty in-house researchers & fifty associates
  • about fifty events a year
  • some twenty funding grants.

Responsibilities and tasks

Technical and loggistics support during cultural and scientific events

  • logistical coordination, setting up venues and catering for receptions
  • setting up technical equipment for conferences and videoconferences
  • ad hoc monitoring of Zoom sessions during events

Relations with the Centre’s suppliers

  • orders, including booking tickets, hotels and catering services
  • occasional tasks, including booking venues and catering for events, drafting and proofreading administrative documents
  • cash management and archiving of supporting documents

Entering and archiving accounting data

  • verification and description of supporting documents (invoices received) and preparation of the appropriate administrative certificates (cash, receipts, etc.)

Assisting in coordination with local staff and contractors working under Czech law (DPP) contracts, as well as CEFRES interns

  • preparing the record of hours worked by each employee and contractor
  • managing leave for employees and contractors
  • managing the working hours of paid interns

Assisting with internal and external communication

  • receiving, sorting and archiving external communications by telephone and email (cefres@cefres.cz)
  • managing internal and external communication tools (Excel spreadsheets; WordPress lists; Office group management)
  • assisting with the archiving and preparation of activity reports, including the annual report

Expected skills

  • versatility and ability to handle several tasks simultaneously
  • Czech: native speaker (preferred)
  • French: good knowledge (minimum B1)
  • English (read, written, spoken)
  • proficiency in office automation tools (in particular Outlook, Excel)

Required qualities

  • autonomy, precision, punctuality
  • communication skills, responsiveness and ability to work as part of a team
  • thoroughness and exactitude in administrative tasks
  • respect for confidentiality and good presentation

Qualification

  • qualifications in administrative management / economics or business / humanities or social sciences
    • OR experience in a similar position
  • appetence for human resources, accounting and administrative management
  • open mind, interest in international exchanges and working within a multicultural team

Conditions & benefits

  • 1-year fixed-term Czech law contract, with possibility of extension
  • 28 days paid vacation
  • part-time job according to candidate’s profile and needs: 25h attendance / week preferred
  • 5 days per week, 5 hours per day required for a salary of 31 927 CZK (= 1300 €)
  • Flexibility regarding working hours during organised events
  • Long summer break with no scientific events
  • Professional training offered by the employer according to the candidate’s profile and needs
  • French language courses at all levels at the Institut français de Prague offered by CEFRES
  • Office in the center of Prague, Na Florenci 3, Prague 1
  • Reduced access to the Kino 35 cinema at the Institut français de Prague

How to apply

Only selected applicants will be invited to be interviewed.

CEFRES Team, Mobility

CEFRES PhD grants 2026 | Results

France & Visegrád PhD mobility grants
    1. TOPOROWSKA Natalia, University of Warsaw :
      Women’s Experience of War in the Egodocuments of Female Soldiers from the Late 18th and Early 19th Century
    2. BOUCON, Cloé, Lumière University, Lyon 2 :
      Between Tradition and Emancipation: A Study of the Paper Materials of the Phalsbourg Genizah

Waiting list (gives the right to become associate)

      1. VARCHOL, Michal, Masaryk University, Brno:
        Manifestations langagières de la maladie d’Alzheimer : analyse contrastive franco-tchèque
      2. POPOVITCH, Adrien, Aix-Marseille University:
        Enquêter sur la pensée critique à l’université : une approche mixte
CEFRES Platform PhD grants
    1. HÄRTELOVÁ, Eliška D., Faculty of Arts UK :
      Didactics of Poetry: Forms of the Possible in Poetic Language
    2. YANG, Zihan, Faculty of Humanities UK :
      Political Ideas of Europe in Czechoslovak Dissent from 1975 to 1992
CEFRES-SAV PhD mobility grants
  1. GOLEINOVÁ, Zuzana, ÚDAFV SAV:
    Documentary Non-places

Waiting list (gives the right to become associate)

2. CHUDÝ, Michal, FÚ SAV:
Nihilism In Existentialism: In Search of Existentialist Ethic

CEFRES-CEU mobility grants
  1. LAHMARI, Said Rafik (Gender Studies, CEU):
    Izlan-n-Tlawin in Diaspora: Kabyle Women’s Multigenerational Migration and the Formation of Cultural Belonging in Paris and Marseille (3 months)
  2. BACSADI, Zsófia (Social Anthropology, CEU):
    The Circulation of Blood Plasma and the Narratives of Gift and Commodity in the EU (2 months)
CEFRES-FiF UK mobility grants
    1. BRAZDILOVÁ, Lucia:
      Diglossia and Code-Switching in Algerian Arabic (5 months)

Waiting list (gives the right to become associate)

    1. DIRGOVÁ, Miroslava:
      Assimilation and Identity in Contemporary Arab Literature: Depicting the Problematics of Migration
CEFRES Team

Niya Metodieva – Research & CV

The “Children” of Socialism: The Shaping of Youth and the Building of a Socialist Society in the People’s Republic of Bulgaria (1944–1968)

Research Area 2: Norms and transgressions

This thesis aims to analyze the construction of socialist society in the People’s Republic of Bulgaria “through” (S. Maza) the issue of youth, from the coup d’état of September 9, 1944, which brought to power the Communist-led coalition of the Fatherland Front, until 1968. By historicizing the construction of the category of “youth,” it proposes to examine the evolution of the sociopolitical boundaries that governed the multiple meanings attached to the notion of “socialist society.” In doing so, she analyzes, in a process-oriented and situated manner, the transformation of the mechanisms of integration and exclusion within this society under construction, the principles according to which they were constituted, and the way in which different groups were thus reconfigured.

She develops a socio-historical methodology rooted in the “critical turn” of the Annales school, which seeks to move beyond the supposed dichotomy between ideology and practice, between representation and action, by proposing a practical history of categories. From a dual methodological perspective, she seeks to understand the co-construction between communist power and socialist society, which requires taking all historical actors “seriously.” Thus, the inquiry unfolds on three levels: first, it examines the construction of categories at the political level; then, their negotiation at the institutional level (high schools and universities) and the potential “controversies” arising from them; and finally, it explores how social trajectories and lived experiences were transformed by the evolution of governance practices. The cross-referencing of political sources (archives of the Bulgarian Communist Party, the Youth Union, biographies, police records) with archives from the Ministry of Public Education (reports, expulsions, documents relating to purges in high schools and universities) and interviews allows for a fresh perspective on socialist construction and the experiences of young people, with a particular emphasis on the issue of repression.

More broadly, the theis, which follows a traditional chronological framework (the postwar period, Stalinization, and de-Stalinization), examines the conceptions of society and social change produced by Bulgarian society and the socialist state through its population policy. The objectification and construction of different “generations,” as well as the production of homogeneous visions of youth, allow us to question the possibility of speaking of “socialist governmentality” but also to situate socialist policy within a longer-term local perspective linking youth and nation. The temporal boundaries allow for a comparison of the experiences of different cohorts (those born around the 1920s and those of the 1940s) against the backdrop of the growing institutionalization of “youth.”

CV

Education

  • Depuis 2022 : Doctorante contractuelle (CNRS International) en histoire (EHESS)
  • 2020- 2022 : Master histoire (EHESS, Paris). Thèse préparée sous la direction d’Alain Blum (EHESS/INED) et de Catherine Gousseff (CNRS/CERCEC).
  • 2016-2020 : Double Licence histoire- histoire de l’art et archéologie (Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne)

Fellowship

  • 2026 : dans le cadre de CARSI/Horizon Europe avec l’ONG Transitions. Association au CEFRES et à l’IMS de l’Université Charles.

Teaching Experience

  • Septembre – Décembre 2025 – Chargée de cours : Histoire sociale et politique de la France au XXs. (L2, Université Paris-Nanterre) (48h).

Presentations (sélection)

  • 19 janvier 2026 – Séminaire : « Empire russe, URSS, sociétés et territoires post-impériaux. Savoirs et pratiques de l’État » (CERCEC/EHESS). Présentation : « La genèse d’une société socialiste bulgare ? Penser, réguler et construire les nouvelles frontières sociales en sortie de guerre : le cas de la jeunesse (1944-1947).
  • 22 janvier 2024 – Workshop “The Voices from Below in the Face of Repression and Arbitrary State Violence” (CEFRES, EHESS, Charles University, Czech Academy of Sciences). Workshop Paper: “Defending Values, Seeking Justice: Parent’s Petitions to the Minister of Popular Enlightenment as Voices from Below, Bulgaria (1944-1946)”
  • 26 septembre 2024 : Table ronde à “Allez Savoir-Marseille » (EHESS). « Le temps de l’obéissance ? Adolescences européennes à l’épreuve des bouleversements du long XXe siècle », avec Emma Papadacci (LIER-FYT) et Lucas Bouguereau (LIER-FYT). Table ronde animée par Julie Pagis (IRIS/CNRS).
  • 5-6 Avril 2024 – Conference Moving Beyond the Centre-Periphery Dynamics: Central and Eastern Europe from the mid-19th century to the present”. Conference paper: “Managing Time, Creating Specialists: Socialist Modernization as seen through the Youth Brigade Movement in the People’s Republic of Bulgaria (1947-1950)”.

Organisation of academic sessions

  • Co-organisatrice de la Conférence doctorale du CERCEC-CETOBaC, « Modernities Debated. Crossed perspectives from Russian, Soviet and Ottoman (post-)imperial spaces: Central and Eastern Europe, Balkans, Eastern Mediterranean, Caucasus and Central Asia” 21 et 22 mai 2024.
CEFRES Team

Michaela Banszelová

A graduate in International Politics and Diplomacy from the University of Economics in Prague and holder of a postgraduate double-degree MBA from the Franco-Czech Institute of Management (IFTG) at the same university. She has spent her entire professional career in the fields of education and cultural cooperation, notably at the First Faculty of Medicine of Charles University and the French Institute in Prague.

Since January 2026, she has held the position of Secretary General at CEFRES.

CEFRES Team

Romain Tiquet – Research & CV

Romain Tiquet holds a PhD from Humboldt University in Berlin. Since 2019, he has been a CNRS researcher (section 35) at the Institut des Mondes Africains. After working on the history of law enforcement in Burkina Faso, his thesis focused on labor mobilization in (post)colonial Senegal. Since 2019, he has been interested in the history of madness in West Africa and is leading the ERC project : https://madaf.hypotheses.org/

Starting in January 2026, he will be hosted at CEFRES, in collaboration with Slovak Africanist and historian Silvestr Trnovec, to develop a new project entitled “Sans colonies, mais toujours colonialiste ? Histoire (tchéco)slovaque et empire colonial français en Afrique, XVIIIe siècle–début du XXe siècle”. This project is being implemented as part of the TANDEM SAV–CNRS 2026-2027 program and explores the historical links between the Czechoslovak space and the French colonial empire in Africa.

CEFRES Team

Silvester Trnovec – Research & CV

Silvester Trnovec is a historian and specialist in Africa at the Institute of Oriental Studies at the Slovak Academy of Sciences. His research has focused principally on transformations of African societies in Western and Northern Africa during the 19th and 20th centuries in the context of French colonialism. He also directs the international project Fontes Historiae Africanae / Sources for the History of Africa, under the auspices of the International Union internationales des académies in Brussels, which is dedicated to the publication of research editions of sources on African history.

He is currently conducting research on the image of Africa in Slovak society and culture in the 19th and 20th centuries, focusing in particular on the emergence of colonial stereotypes in a context where direct colonialism had not been experienced.

From January 2026 he will be collaborating with the French historian and Africa specialist Romain Tiquet to develop a new project entitled No colonies, yet still colonial? Czechoslovak history and the French colonial space in Africa up to 1945. This project is implemented within the TANDEM SAV-CNRS 2026-2027 programme and explores the historic links between the Czechoslovak space and the French colonial empire in Africa.