Civic Integration of Immigrants in Europe: the Case of Austria and Czechia

Research Area 1 & 2: Displacements, “Dépaysements” and Discrepencies: People, Knowledge and Practices & Norms and Transgressions

Contact: anna.simbartlova@cefres.cz (from September 1, 2019)

My PhD research deals with a phenomenon of new immigrant integration policies, that have been implemented across Europe since the turn of the century. Countries that traditionally used different approaches to immigrant integration in the past, such as France, the Netherlands or Germany, started to introduce language and civic courses or tests, often put as an obligation to immigrants to obtain a certain type of stay permit in the host country. As follows from the scholar debate of the past twenty years, these new integration policies are referred to as civic integration.

This PhD research aims to contribute to the civic integration debate with new knowledge from the region of Central Europe which is omitted in the academic debate on immigrant integration. On the example of Austria and Czechia, the research intends to point out the dissemination of civic integration policies eastward and to evaluate the development of civic integration use and its form in the selected countries. Most importantly, the research aims at studying the question of civic integration in regards to the net of actors who put these integration policies into practice. While working with the multi-level governance theory, the outcomes of this project shall contribute to the debate of questioning a national vs. local turn in integration policies as a consequence of civic integration introduction.

CV

Education

2016- : International Area Studies (PhD Programme), Department of European Studies, Charles University

2013-2016: West-European Studies (MA Programme), Department of European Studies, Charles University

2009-2013: International Area Studies (BA Programme), Institute of International Studies, Charles University

Research

• 2016- : Civic Integration of Immigrants in Europe: the Case of Austria and Czechia (PhD dissertation, GAUK project 2019-2020)
• 2018-2020: Increasing Personal Representation of the Czech Republic in International Organizations (TAČR research 2018-2020)
• 2016: Civic Integration of Immigrants in France in 2002-2012 (Master Thesis)
• 2013: Alliance Française and Institut Français: Cooperation or Competition? The Case of the Czech Republic (Bachelor Thesis)

Publication

• Simbartlová Anna, „Civic Integration Policies in Central Europe: The Case of the Czech Republic”, Der Donauraum, forthcoming (2019).

Academic Experience

• 2019- : Associated PhD Fellow at CEFRES 2019/2020 (CEFRES, Prague)
• 2019- : Associated Researcher of the Institute of International Relations (IRR, Prague)
• 2018-2019: Europaeum PhD Scholar
• 2017-2018: Bachelor Seminar Migration and Integration of Immigrants in Western Europe (FSV UK)
• 2017: The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia (PhD Internship)
• 2014-2017: European Parliament Simulation SPECQUE
• 2014-2016: Václav Havel Europaeum MA Scholar
• 2015: Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne, Paris (Václav Havel Europaeum Study Exchange)
• 2011-2012: Institut d’Etudes Politiques, Aix-en-Provence (Erasmus Study Exchange)
• 2006-2008: Invisible Victims of Communism (Research Team Member)

Conferences, Workshops, Summer Schools

• 2018-2019: Europaeum PhD Scholars Modules (Oxford, Brussels, Geneva, Leiden, Barcelona, Berlin, Prague)
• 2018: Young Scholars Forum Conference (Institut für den Donauraum und Mitteleuropa, Vienna)
  • Author‘s contribution: Civic Integration of Immigrants in Central Europe. The Case of the Czech Republic
• 2018: IOM Summer School (International Organization for Migration, Prague)
• 2018: Europaeum Graduate Workshop (University of Oxford, Oxford)
• 2014: Europe Work Workshop (University of Cologne, Berlin, Brussels)
• 2014: Europaeum Graduate Workshop (University of Oxford, Oxford)

African American Poets Abroad: Black and Red Allegiances in Early Cold War Czechoslovakia

Research Area 1: Displacements, “Dépaysements” and Discrepancies: People Knowledge and Practices

Contact: frantiska.zezulakova.schormova@cefres.cz (from September 1, 2019)

I just finished a PhD program at the Department of Anglophone Literatures and Cultures at Charles University in Prague with a dissertation called “African American Poets Abroad: Black and Red Allegiances in Early Cold War Czechoslovakia.” I am now working on turning it into a book with the preliminary title Prague, Red and Black: Early Cold War Journeys, Networks, and Poems.

After being a PhD Fellow in 2019/2020, I am pleased to be able to stay in the CEFRES team as an Associated Fellow. In the future, I look forward to my stay at Northumbria University in Newcastle (Anglo-Czech Fund), FU Berlin (John F. Kennedy Library Research Grant), and, most recently, at the Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen (Jan Patočka Fellowship).

CV

Education

2016–2020 :PhD studies, English and American Literature, Faculty of Arts, Charles University Prague. Dissertation title: African American Poets Abroad: Black and Red Allegiances in Early Cold War Czechoslovakia.
Supervisor: Justin Quinn
Date of Defense: December 18, 2020
Opponents: prof. Penny Von Eschen, Stephen Delbos, PhD

2014-2016: Master’s Degree in Anglophone Literatures and cultures, Faculty of Arts, Charles University Prague. MA thesis title: Us and Them: Presenting America 1948-1956

2010-2014: BA program English and American Studies and German for International Communication

Professional Awards and Fellowships

• 2017-2018: Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Harvard University
• Fellow, Fulbright-Masaryk Scholarship
• 05/2017: Oxford University, The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities Research stay and participation in Race and Resistance workshop, EUROPANEUM Scholarship
• 2016: Mathesius Award for the MA thesis, Department of Anglophone Literatures and Cultures, Charles University Prague
• 2016: Free University Berlin, John F. Kennedy Institute of North American Studies Catholic Academic Exchange Service (KAAD) Scholarship, research stay

Grants

2017-2019 : Things in Poems – Poems of Things
Researcher, supported through Charles University grant (GAUK). Main outcome: international conference in January 2019

Journal articles

2021 – “Stalinův černý apoštol: Paul Robeson v Praze,” [Stalin’s Black Apostle: Paul Robeson in Prague], Soudobé dějiny  (accepted for publication, spring 2021)

Chapters in collective monographs

2020 – “Hlasy z Harlemu: Transkontinentální solidarita v poezii Noémie de Sousy” [Voices from Harlem: Transcontinental Solidarity in Noémia de Sousa’s Poetry], Zamyšlení nad africkými identitami zobrazenými v básnickém prostoru [Reconsidering African Identities in Poetry], Praha: FF UK, 2020.

2018 – “Pravidla hry: Zábranovy poznámky k detektivní próze” [Rules of the Game: Zábrana’s Translations of Detective Fiction] Jan Zábrana, Básník, překladatel, čtenář [Jan Zábrana: Poet, Translator, Reader], Praha: Karolinum, 2018

Selected academic reviews

2020 – “Kánon a já”[The Canon and I], Svět literatury 62, p. 183–187. http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11956/123014

2019 – Half-Buried Books: Forgotten Anti-Imperialism of Popular Front Modernism”Historical Materialism, electronic version http://www.historicalmaterialism.org/book-review/half-buried-books-forgotten-anti-imperialism-popular-front-modernism

2018 – “Forget English! Orientalism and World Literature” Twentieth Century Literature 64 (2): p. 259–264. https://doi.org/10.1215/0041462X-6941939

2017 – “Švéda, Josef. Země zaslíbená, země zlořečená: obrazy Ameriky v české literatuře a kultuře (Promised Land, Accursed Land. Images of America in Czech Literature and Culture)” Brno Studies in English, 42 (2): p. 179–184. https://doi.org/10.5817/BSE2017-2-10

Conferences

• 09/2019 – Secrets: Biennial Conference & 22^nd International Colloquium of American Studies, Czech and Slovak Association for American Studies & the Department of English and American Studies, Palacky University Olomouc
  “Cold War Secrets and African American Literature: The Story of Abraham Chapman”

• 03/2019 – Bad Romance: The Ethics of Love, Sex, and Desire, Harvard University.
  “Me, Too, but What? Socialist Sex, Translatability, and Milan Kundera

• 01/ 2019 – Things in Poems – Poems of Things, Charles University Prague
  “All those Pretty Things: Women and Their Objects in Anglophone Poetry”
  conference organizer – the conference was supported through a grant from Charles University (GAUK)

• 11/2018 – Cesty translatologie, Charles University Prague “Konceptualizace rasy v českých překladech afroamerické literatury” [Concepts of Race in Czech Translations of African American Literature]

• 10/2018 – New Pathways in American Studies, Masaryk University Brno “Black Bodies White Translations: Cold War Journeys of African American Poets”

• 06/2017 – The Hermes Consortium for Literary and Cultural Studies Seminar, Aarhus University „Solidarity in Black and Red: Transnational Perspective on the Translation on Anti-colonial Poetry in Cold War Czechoslovakia”

• 12/2015 – Prva Stran, International Student Conference in Comparative Literature, University of Ljubljana “‘The Other America’: Constructing American Literature 1948- 1956“

• 11/2015 – Jan Zábrana: básník, překladatel, čtenář, Charles University Prague “Pravidla hry: Zábranovy překlady detektivní prózy” [Rules of the Game: Zábrana’s Translations of Detective Fiction]

Academic Seminars

10/2019–02/2020 : Charles University Prague, Department of Anglophone Literatures and Cultures: “Reading African American Literature Now (and from Europe)” Course Design; Lecturer

 

Multiple Bodies in the Context of Vaccination as a Medical Practice

Research Area 2: Norms & Transgressions

Contact: tereza.sedlackova@cefres.cz

The research focuses on understanding the nature and character of vaccination as a medical practice and controversies associated with it. Firstly, it asks How is vaccination done in medical practices?. The project focuses on mandatory vaccination of children in the Czech Republic and, by conducting ethnography, it aims to examine practices, activities and negotiations connected with vaccination in paediatricians’ clinics. Secondly, the research is concerned with bodies in the context of vaccination. It studies practices that enact (un-)vaccinated bodies, various conceptualisations of (un-)vaccinated bodies and their consequences for social debates related to the vaccination.

CV

Education

2018 – : Charles University in Prague, Faculty of Social Sciences, Sociology
PhD thesis: Multiple Bodies in the Context of Vaccination as a medical practice

2016–2018: Charles University in Prague, Faculty of Social Sciences, Sociology
Specialization: Social Anthropology and Qualitative Research Master thesis: Lived Epilepsy: Management of Disease and Embodied Knowledge

2012–2017 Charles University in Prague, Faculty of Social Sciences, Media studies
Bachelor thesis: I eat, therefore I am: the construction of foodie bloggers identity

2012–2016 Charles University in Prague, Faculty of Social Sciences, Sociology and Social Anthropology
Bachelor thesis: Workcamp Liminality, or There and Back Again (and the extraordinary experiences that happen between)

Working Experience

• 2019-2020: Teaching Assistant, leading seminars – Introduction to Social Anthropology, Thinking sociologically – an introduction
  Charles University in Prague
• 2018-2019: Teaching – Seminar in Anthropology II
  Charles University in Prague
• 2017–2019: Research assistant
  Civic Engagement and the Politics of Health Care
  Charles University in Prague, Faculty of Social Science
• 2017-2019: Teaching Assistant
  Leading seminars – History of Sociology
  Charles University in Prague
• 2017-2018: Public Space Research in Humpolec Town
• 2016–2018: Moral Economies of Contemporary Monasteries in the Czech Republic and in Austria, member of international research team under guidance of Barbora Spalová, Ph.D. and Isabele Jonveux, Ph.D.

Conference Papers

• 2019 SEDLÁČKOVÁ, T. “Body, memory and vaccination in different political regimes”. Accepted for The 2nd International Workshop in Medical Anthropology. Jerusalem.
• 2019 SEDLÁČKOVÁ, T. “Objectified subjectivity: Multiple modes of knowledge production among epileptic patients”. Social Sciences & Health Innovations: Multiplicities. Tomsk.
• 2018 NUMERATO, D., HONOVÁ P. A., SEDLÁČKOVÁ T. “Politicisation, de-politicisation and re-politicisation of health care”. Midterm Conference ESA RN 32. Prague.
• 2018 SEDLÁČKOVÁ, T. “To vax, or not to vax, is that even the question?” Workshop Re-politicising Public Health. King’s College London.
• 2018 SEDLÁČKOVÁ, T., SPALOVÁ, B. “Reinvention of monastic life in the Czech Republic: The agency of material archives of monastic buildings” Biennial Conference of European Association of Social Anthropologists. Stockholm.
• 2018 SEDLÁČKOVÁ, T., SPALOVÁ, et al. ”Moral Economy of Monasteries in the Czech Republic; in the Process of Separating the State and the Church” Annual Conference of Biograf Journal. Mochov.

Publications

• Sedláčková, Tereza, and Barbora Spalová. 2019. “The Lived Spirituality Of Czech Monasteries Through Architectural Materiality”. In A Visual Approach To The Study Of Religious Orders: Zooming In On Monasteries, Marcin Jewdokimow and Thomas Quartier, 121-147. New York, NY: Routledge.
• In press: Sedláčková, Tereza. Becoming authentic: Sartrian sadomasochism of fieldwork. Biograf.
• Under review: Vochocová L. / Numerato D. / Sedláčková T. 2020. The Other Side of the Pendulum: Pro-vaccine Online Participation and Trench-warfare Dynamics in a Public Health Controversy. Social Science and Medicine.

How to cure the war? The development of psychiatric knowledge and its impact on the construction of social norms in Europe between 1945 and 1968

Research Area 1 & 2: Displacements, “Dépaysements” and Discrepencies: People, Knowledge and Practices & Norms and Transgressions

Contact: jakub.strelec(@)cefres.cz

This research project will deal with development of psychiatric knowledge and its impact on the social stability of post-war European societies between 1945 and 1968. The main aim of this project is to examine how this knowledge – in the interaction with the criminal justice system – shaped the social stability of different post-war European societies.

The research project will be divided into three main parts: The first part analyses the production of psychiatric knowledge and ‘deviant’ behaviour within the European psychiatric network. The main aim of this part is to study the exchange of knowledge and ideas, as well as knowledge transfers across the Iron Curtain amongst psychiatrists.

The second part examines how psychiatric knowledge was used in psychiatric expert testimonies of ‘deviant’ behaviour in criminal proceedings at the courts of three different European cities (Prague, Düsseldorf & London). Those cities were selected because all of them were situated within different political and social contexts in which psychiatric knowledge and the law system interacted. 

The third part examines how these criminal proceedings were covered in the local media, for instance, in newspapers and journals. It furthermore examines the negotiation between psychiatry, law and the public about the boundaries of socially acceptable behaviour. From this point of view, the social consensus between state and society was permanently renegotiated.

This PhD project combines transnational and comparative approaches and it conducts a macro analysis of psychiatric discourse, as well as a micro analysis of case studies. This together builds the methodological framework of this research project.

CV

Education

2018- : Ph.D., Modern History, Institute of International Studiesm Charles University in Prague

2018: Mgr., History – Economic and Social History, Institute of Economic and Social History, Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague

2015: Bc., History, Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague

Fellowships and Scholarships

• 09/2019-08/2020: CEFRES Platform PhD Fellowship
• 06/2019, 09/2017-02/2018: DAAD Lehrstuhl für Geschichte und Kulturen Osteuropas, Heinrich-Heine-Universität, Düsseldorf
• 09/2016-06/2017: Erasmus, Aberystwyth University, Wales, UK

Research Grants

• 2018-2022: Charles University Grant Agency “How to cure the war? The development of physiatric knowledge and its impact on the construction of social norms in Europe between 1945 and 1968?”

Working Experience

• 10/2018-06/2019: Research Assistant, Herzl Center of Israel Studies, Charles University in Prague

Publications

• Střelec, Jakub. In the Name of Unions and Nation. The Development of Welsh Labour Historiography in the 1950s – 1990s, in Prager wirtschafts- und sozialhistorische Mitteilungen – Prague Economic and Social History Papers, 2017, 26, 2, s. 62-74.

The director and the researchers of the French Centre of Research in Humanities and Social Sciences (CEFRES) are deeply worried about the dismantlement threatening the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, the biggest academic institution of the country. They express their full support to the president of the Academy, Mr. Laszlo Lovasz, and to the whole academic community of Hungary, concerned with the respect of academic freedom and intellectual independence.

One of the CEFRES’ main missions is to promote research in Humanities and Social Sciences and to build long-term cooperation with universities and academic institutions in the four Visegrad’s countries (Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Poland). The CEFRES’ team is alarmed at the current discourse stigmatizing partners whose intellectual relevance and academic excellence cannot be questioned and at the succession of reforms aiming at weakening them. They express their full support to their colleagues of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, to the Central European University and to all the academic institutions which are currently threatened.

Prague, the 10thof March 2019

Zineb El Ouassini

Bachelor in Social sciences at EGE Rabat (Ecole de Gouvernance et d’économie) in Morocco. Currently in Prague on exchange at Metropolitan University Prague (International Relations and European Studies department)
Research and study fields: Interest in topics related to global issues in International Relations, contemporary history,  geopolitics and political geography of the MENA region,  development studies, Security studies (migration and refugees) and environmental governance
Internship duration: June-July 2019
Administrative internship

Hoevi Foch

First year of Master program in modern and contemporary civilization (history) at Jean Jaurès University (Toulouse II), currently doing an ERASMUS at Charles University
Research and study field: Contemporary history, history of minorities, medicin and gender during the XIXth century. Interest about the normalization and marginalization process bounded with the history of psychiatry
Master thesis topic: Mania and Melancholia in Toulouse during the XIXth century
Internship duration: June-July 2019
Research and administrative internship

Xavier Vest

Bachelor student at the Institut d’Etude Politique of Rennes, currently in Prague as an exchange student at Charles University, within the Faculty of Sociology
Research and Study fields: General interest for humanities, contemporary history, political philosophy, sociology, International relations
Internship duration: June-July 2019
Administrative internship

Léna Perrin

Bachelor student at the Institut d’Etude Politique of Lyon (Sciences Po Lyon), currently in Prague as an exchange student at Charles University, within the Faculty of Humanities
Research and Study fields: Political science, political philosophy, history of law and institutions, French and comparative constitutional law, cultural anthropology
Internship duration: May-June 2019
Administrative internship

Jacques-Hans Roche

Bachelor in History (Law and Political Sciences) at the University of Lorraine. Currently in Erasmus exchange at Charles University in Prague
Research and Study fields: Contemporary History, History of International relations, History of the European Union construction, Institutional system of the European Union, French political history
Internship duration: May-June 2019
Research and administrative internship

Jade Iafrate

Student at Sciences Po Aix, France, graduated with a double bachelor’s degree in Political Science and Law. Currently an Erasmus student in the Master’s Degree in Social Sciences at Charles University
Research fields: Political science and political decision analysis, international relations, international public law, history of human rights and freedoms, European rights, and history of political thought since 1789
Master thesis topic (provisional title): The impact of private couple-relations on human rights in France’s Fifth Republic
Internship duration: April-May 2018
Research and administrative internship 

Koupaia Corbet

Master Esdoc (Library, Documentation, Research) at Poitiers University, in Information and Communication Science, Faculty of Humanities, Social Sciences and Arts
Research fields: open-science, cultural médiation, traditional music, research data management in Scientific and Technical Information
Master thesis topic (provisional title): Open science as a tool for the transmission of ethnomusical heritage
Internship duration : April-July 2019
Administrative internship in library/documentation

Martin Espinas

Bachelor degree in applied human sciences at Grenoble Alpes University currently in exchange at Charles University of Prague
Research and Study fields: Contemporary history, geography, world geopolitics, multidisciplinary and comparative approach on subjects through different human sciences points of views
Internship duration: March-April 2019
Graphic and administrative internship

Hector Marchand

Master’s degree in Political Science at Rennes’ Law University, France. Currently on exchange in Prague at the Metropolitan University Prague‘s International Relations and European Studies department.

Research and Study fields: Interest in broad Political Science topics with an emphasis on questions related to International Politics. International system, governance, structuring ideologies, place and dichotomy of actors (nation-states, supra/infra/inter-state actors…); conceptualization of conflicts and security, among others.

Internship duration: March-May 2019
Research and administrative internship

Coline Perron

Franco-German Master in History and Civilization/Geschichtswissenschaft at EHESS, Paris and Ruprecht-Karls Universität, Heidelberg; élève normalienne at Ecole Normale Supérieure de Paris, rue d’Ulm.

Research fields: contemporary history, especially the history of the Eastern countries during the communist period; cultural mediation in the field of historical memory, particularly problematics around the opening and making available of archives; administration of cultural institutions, including history museums; translation of literary texts (French /German/English + intermediate level in Spanish and notions of Russian); intercultural communication.

Master thesis topic (provisional title): Independent environmental groups in the GDR in the 1980s
Internship duration: February-April 2019
Research and administrative internship

Marie-Anna Hamanová

Master studies in Interpretation (Czech–French) and Czech Language and Literature, Faculty of Arts, Charles University.

Research fields: Interpreting, Bilingualism, Psycholinguistics, Contemporary Czech literature

Master thesis topic: Bilingualism as a disadvantage? Lexical retrieval in the bilinguals’ first language.

Internship duration: July–September 2018
Administrative internship (translation)