Category Archives: CEFRES Team

CEFRES Team

Maika Nguyen – Research & CV

VAEDID : ‘”Vietnamese” Across “Europe”: Displacement, Identity and Dis/connections’

Výzkumná osa 1: Přemístění, vykořenění, odchýlení: lidé, vědění, praktiky

Maika Nguyen is a literary researcher and joined CEFRES in January 2026 for two years. She is interested in migrant literature, diaspora studies and postcolonial studies. She holds a doctorate in French and Francophone Studies (University College Dublin, 2025), where she wrote her thesis on representations of the return home in the autofiction of Dany Laferrière (Haiti) and Anna Moï (Vietnam). In it, she argued for a re-evaluation of the relationship between understandings of the self and current conceptions of home in postcolonial autofiction.

At CEFRES, she will be undertaking a postdoctoral project on the Vietnamese diaspora in Europe, during which she will analyse the works of Vietnamese directors and writers across four countries: the UK, France (including its overseas territory, Martinique), Germany and the Czech Republic. The project examines, on the one hand, the question of identity in the Vietnamese diaspora, whose members have experienced and remember differing “Vietnams” (notably North/South Vietnam); on the other, it compares the representation of migrant experiences in (post)socialist European countries to those in Western European ones, thereby shedding light on the intersections between our collective memory, in its contested and plural forms, of North/South (Vietnam) and East/West (Europe) divides.

CV

Education

  • 2025: PhD in Literature (French and Francophone Studies), Université College Dublin, Ireland. Thesis: ‘Writing Home: Haiti and Vietnam in the Autofiction of Dany Laferrière and Anna Moï’, supervised by Prof Mary Gallagher. 
  • 2021: MA in French Philology and Anglophone Literatures and Cultures, Charles University, Czech Republic.
  • 2018 : BA in French Philology, Charles University, Czech Republic. 

Conference Papers (selection)

  • 2025 : Roundtable, ‘Legacies of 1975 in Southeast Asia and Its Diasporas: Fifty Years Afterward’, Modern Languages Association, New Orleans. 
  • 2024 : ‘The Returnee as Tourist (Guide) in the Autoficiton of Dany Laferrière and Anna Moï’, Research Seminar, Humanities Institute, University College Dublin.
  • 2023 : ‘Viết, Việt: relating and translating Vietnam in Anna Moï’s autofiction’, Society for French Studies Annual Conference, Newcastle University.
  • 2023 : ‘Returning to my water(s)? Considerations of “home” in Nostalgie de la rizière by Anna Moï’, Passages, University College Dublin 
  • 2022 : ‘The Lens of ‘Home’ in Migrant Writing: Memory and Identity in Vietnamese Migrant Literature’, Faculté de lettres, University of Social Sciences and Humanities (Vietnam National University).

International Research Exchanges

  • 2023: University of the French Antilles, Martinique. Erasmus+ doctoral exchange.
  • 2022 : University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Hanoi, Vietnam. Erasmus+ International Credit Mobility.

Publications

  • ‘Returning to Home Water(s) in Nostalgie de la rizière by Anna Moï’, Irish Journal of French Studies, 2025.
CEFRES Team

Giedrė Šabasevičiūtė – Research & CV

Giedrė Šabasevičiūtė is a research fellow at the Oriental Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences and an associated researcher at CEDEJ in Cairo. Trained as sociologist (EHESS, 2015), her research focuses on marginal literary and intellectual communities in Egypt, examined through the study of the practices and sites of sociability that sustain them. In her previous project, she examined the Egyptian man of letters-turned Islamic activist Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966) to understand how the Arab intellectual canon has been constructed in opposition to literary cultures cast as unmodern on account of their religious character. Using archival research, the project aimed to uncover his networks and sites of intellectual sociability in interwar Egypt, revealing how they shifted over the course of his career and ultimately lead to his exclusion from Egypt‘s official intellectual history. This work culminated in the publication of Sayyid Qutb: An Intellectual Biography (Syracuse University Press, 2021).

In her current research, she maintains her interest in marginal literary cultures beyond established circuits of recognition by focusing on amateur literary communities in Cairo constituted within the associative world of literary clubs. Through the site of a literary club, she examines how writing and publishing fiction, as well as attending literary clubs, open up new life possibilities for middle-aged Egyptians living under the post-revolutionary regime. Provisionally titled Enchanted Lives: Midlife and Literary Self-Making in Cairo, this research will be published as a monograph by Syracuse University Press. Her work has appeared in the International Journal of Middle East Studies, Middle East Critique, the Journal of Middle East Women‘s Studies, Middle East – Topics & Arguments, L‘Année du Maghreb, Critique Internationale, and Egypte, Soudan, Mondes Arabes (ESMA). She has also published chapters in edited volumes.

During the next two years (2026-2028), she will be working with Hélène Martinelli (ENS Lyon) and Ali Al-Moussaoui (Charles University) within the Tandem Program AV ČR-CNRS on the project Paper Bonds: Bookmaking for Kin, Friends and the Self in Contemporary Europe and the Middle East.

Within this project, she will explore the self-publishing practices of marginalized literary communities in Cairo.

CV

Employment:

· 2020 – present: Research Fellow, Oriental Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences.

· 2019 – 2022: Lecturer, Charles University, Department of Middle Eastern Studies.

· 2015 – 2020: Postdoctoral Researcher, Oriental Institute, Czech Academy of Sciences.

· 2015 – 2016: Lecturer, Institute of Asian and Transcultural Studies, Vilnius University

· 2015 – 2016: Lecturer, Faculty of Political Science and Diplomacy, Vytautas Magnus University.

Education and Academic Qualifications

· 2015: Ph.D, sociology, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris.

· 2008: M. A, sociology, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris.

· 2006: B. A, Arabic Language and Literature, Sorbonne IV-Paris.

· 2004: B. A. Arabic Studies, Oriental Institute, Vilnius University.

Awards and Grants

· 2025 – 2007: 2 year grant for a project Paper Bonds: Bookmaking for Friends, Kin, and the Self in Europe and the Middle East (2026-2028), TANDEM by CNRS, Czech Academy of Sciences, and CEFRES (with Hélène Martinelli).

· 2022 – 2025: 3 years grant for a project Pathways of Literary Professionalization in Twenty-First Century Egypt (2023-2025), GAČR (The Czech Science Foundation).

· 2022 – The Award of the Czech Academy of Sciences for the outstanding scientific results for the monograph Sayyid Qutb, an Intellectual Biography (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2021)

· 2021-2023 – Mobility Grant Barrande French-Czech Mobility Grant. The Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports. Funding for mobility and scientific exchange between the Oriental Institute (Prague), IREMAM (Aix-en-Province), and Paris-8 Vincennes (Paris)

· 2016, 2019, 2021 – Awarded grants Strategy AV21 -Czech Academy of Sciences to organize cultural events and conferences in Prague.

· 2011-2013: Ph.D. scholarship, French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and CNRS, hosted by

CEDEJ (Cairo).

Selected List of Publications (from 2018)

Monographs:

· Sayyid Qutb. An Intellectual Biography (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2021).

Edited Journal Issues:

· “Ruins of the Welfare State. Material Legacies of a Socialist Middle East”, Egypte, Soudan, Mondes Arabes, CEDEJ, nr. 25, 2025 (with Carl Rommel, Uppsala University)

Peer-reviewed Articles (selection)

· 2025. “The High Art Unites Us’. Staging Unity through Honoring in Cairo’s Literary Clubs, Middle East Critique, 1-16. https://doi.org/10.1080/19436149.2025.2488081

· 2024. “Creating Spaces for Culture: Self-Efforts and the Production of Marginality in Cairo’s Cultural Palaces,” ESMA, Issue 25, 202, 163-182.

· 2024. « Introduction: Ruins of the Welfare State. Material Legacies of a Socialist Middle East », ESMA, n° 25, 163-182 (with Carl Rommel).

· 2023. “Women Writing in Cairo: Midlife, Self-Care, and the Informal World of Literature”, Journal of Middle East Women Studies, November, Vol. 20, Issue 1. https://doi.org/10.1215/15525864-10815483

· 2020. “Sociabilités et ruptures biographiques. Retour sur la conversion islamiste de Sayyid Qutb», Critique Internationale, no. 88 (2020/3), 131-150. https://doi.org/10.3917/crii.088.0131

· 2018. “Sayyid Qutb and the Crisis of Culture in Late 1940s Egypt”, International Journal of Middle East Studies 50 (1), 85-101.

Book Chapters:

· 2021 “When a Coterie Becomes a Generation. Intellectual Sociability and the Narrative of Generational Change in Sayyid Qutb’s Egypt”, in Yasmine Berriane et al (eds.) Methodological Approaches to Societies in Transformation. How to Make Sense of Change (Palgrave Macmillan).

Selected Conference Presentations (from 2022)

· 2025 – “The Code of Karam. How Literature Shapes Post-Revolutionary Spaces in Cairo?” Middle East Centre, St. Anthony’s, Oxford University, December 4.

· 2025 – « Produire de “vrais livres”: l’essor de l’autoédition et la valeur de l’objet-livre en Egypte » in the conference « Le livre fait par tous : actualités et perspectives de la recherche sur l’autoédition », Bibliothèque Nationale de France-Richelieu, Paris, November 28.

· 2025 – “Working for Pleasure, not Money: Cairo’s Associative Literary Scene and its Alternative Value System”, 5th ISA Forum of Sociology, Rabat, Morocco, 11 July.

· 2025 – “In the Interstices of a Changing City: Literary Place-Making Practices in Cairo”, 10th European Conference of African Studies, Prague, 27 June.

· 2025 – “Between Gatekeeping and Self-Making. The Book in Cairo’s Economy of Self-Publishing”, international conference Entrer en Littérature/Entering Litterature ENS Lyon, 27-29 March.

· 2025. “In the Cracks of the Welfare State. Midlife and Literary Self-Reinvention in Egypt”, CEDEJ, February 11, Cairo.

· 2023. “Writers, Not Civil Servants. Running Culture Palaces in Cairo”, MESA, Montreal, Canada, November 2.

· 2023. “Cultural Life in the Cracks of the Projects. The Development of Culture Palaces under Nasser and al-Sisi.” The BRISMES Conference, Exeter, UK, 3-5 July

· 2022. “Out of Place. Class Aspirations and Mobilities Among Egyptian Fiction Writers”. Congress SeSaMO, Naples, Italy, 23 June.

· 2022. “The Currency of Literature. Writers and the Practice of Takrim in Cairo’s Literary Clubs”, EGYCLASS Conference, CEDEJ, Cairo, November 5.

· 2022 – “L’Etat se retire: la fabrication du “soi littéraire” au sein des Palais de la culture au Caire”, Insaniyyat Congress, Tunis, Tunisia, September 22.

Academic Service:

· 2020-Present. Member of the Administrative and Editorial Board of Egypte, Soudan, Mondes Arabes, published by CEDEJ, Cairo.

· 2020 – Present: Co-editor of the “Sources and Documents” in Egypte, Soudan, Mondes Arabes.

· 2025-2028: Member of the Scientific Committee of BULAC (La Bibliothèque des Langues et Civilisations), Paris.

CEFRES Team

Anne Fornerod – Research & CV

Anne Fornerod is a director of research at the CNRS, attached to the UMR Law, Religion, Business and Society (UMR 7354 DRES) at the University of Strasbourg.

She co-leads the project AMI-SHS ReligiS- Religions et sociétés face aux défis contemporains (University of Strasbourg, 2025-2031)

Her research focuses on religious law, which consists of studying the legal framework governing religion in contemporary societies. She conducts research on the legal regime governing religious heritage, whether in terms of its future or the relationship between the religious and cultural uses of these immovable and movable assets. She is also interested in freedom of religion, whether in the case law of the European Court of Human Rights, in the form of spiritual assistance in public services, or in its relationship with freedom of expression. In the French context, she also works on the legal framework of Islam. Finally, she regularly works on the variations of the principle of secularism in French law.

CV 

University Education

2015 Postdoctoral Habilitation (University of Strasbourg)

2006 PhD in public law (Paris-Sud University)

Profession Education

2021 Director of research at CNRS (2nd class)

2011 Research fellow at CNRS (1st class)

2010-2011 Postdoctoral project RELIGARE (FP7, 2010-2013)

2006-2008 Postdoctoral research at CNRS (UMR 7012 PRISME, CNRS / University of Strasbourg)

Professional experience

Co-head of the internal Rights and Religions team at UMR 7354 DRES

2021-2025: Member of Section 36 of the National Committee of the CNRS

2023-2028: Collaborator at COLIBEX – France-Quebec Research Chair on Contemporary Issues in Freedom of Expression

2020-2028: Co-head of the research area Constructions de la société européenne in the Institut Thématique Interdisciplinaire (ITI) MAKErS

2018-2022: Member of the research council of the Maison Interuniversitaire des Sciences de l’Homme – Alsace (MISHA)

Member of research society Religioni, diritti ed Economie nello Spazio Mediterraneo (REDESM)

Member of the Consortium européen des recherches sur les relations Églises-État

Participation in research projects

2023-2024: Islam et droit des services publics, led by OMIJ (University of Limoges), financed by the Bureau central des cultes

2023-2027: Head of a working group within the ANR project Just Moral (led by UMR DCS)

2019-2022: Les géométries variables de l’aumônerie musulmane. Comparaison interinstitutionelle, financed by the Bureau central des cultes

2019-2023: Interactive Atlas of religious or belief minority rights and claims in the EU countries (dir. Silvio Ferrari, Fondazione per le scienze religiose Giovanni XXIII, Bologne)

2011-2022: Mémoloi project, coordinated by the Centre d’Études sur la Coopération Juridique Internationale (CECOJI) on the memory of major heritage protection laws, in conjunction with the Directorate General of Heritage and the History Committee of the Ministry of Culture

2010-2013: RELIGARE – Religious diversity and secular models in Europe-Innovative approaches to law and policy, Projet Européen financé par la Commission Européenne (7ème PCRD)

Selection of publications

  • Les géométries variables de l’aumônerie musulmane. Comparaison inter-institutionnelle : prison, armées, hôpital (avec C. Béraud, C. de Galembert, B. Farhat), PUAM, coll. Droit et religions, 2024, 278 p.
  • La liberté de religion en question(s) (dir.), Larcier, Bruxelles, 2022, 212 p.
  • Le pluralisme religieux dans les cimetières en Europe (dir.), Strasbourg, PUS, 2019, 299 p.
  • Annotated Legal Documents on Islam in Europe: France, Leiden, Brill, 2016, 192 p.
  • Funding religious heritage (ed.), Farnham, Ashgate, 2015, 224 p.
  • Le régime juridique du patrimoine religieux, Paris, L’Harmattan, collection Droit du patrimoine culturel et naturel, 2013, 512 p.
  • Assistance spirituelle dans les services publics (dir.), Strasbourg, PUS, 2012, 198 p.
  • Liberté de religion et liberté d’expression, Revue du droit des religions, 20/2025 (coord. dossier thématique)
  • Les enjeux contemporains du patrimoine culturel religieux, Revue du droit des religions, 3/2017 (coord. dossier thématique)
CEFRES Team

Barbora Spalová – Research & CV

Barbora Spalová returns to CEFRES, where she was an intern during her studies at Charles University, now as a religious anthropologist. In January 2026, she will begin working with Anne Fornerod on a Tandem project which aims to create a larger European project entitled Agency of presence and absence of religious buildings.

Barbora Spalová studied ethnology and social anthropology at Charles University in Prague. While working on her dissertation, she began to focus primarily on the anthropology of Christianity in combination with studies of memory and public space. Her published dissertation is entitled God Knows Why. A Study of Memories and Power Regimes in Christian Churches in Northern Bohemia (2012). Her postdoctoral project continued in the field of memory studies and focused on the management of tangible and intangible traces of the German past in the Czech and German border regions (in collaboration with social geographer Paul Bauer). Within the field of anthropology of Christianity, Barbora Spalová focuses on the relationships between churches and societies, especially in Central Europe, where they are marked by years of state atheism, lived spiritualities and ecclesiologies and their political-economic aspects, as well as specific manifestations of post-secularism in this region, new configurations of the religious, spiritual, and secular. More than ten years ago, she also began to study the renewal of monastic life after 1990 in former Czechoslovakia, and this interest led her to new monastic communities in California in 2022-2023. Both old and new monasticism remain a field of research for Barbora Spalová, and this will also be the case within the Tandem project at CEFRES.

The aim of Tandem is to connect researchers from many fields who could jointly prepare a project in which churches and monasteries in Europe will be examined as agentive phenomena that are not only monuments worthy of conservation, but actively enter into spatial, emotional, political, economic, symbolic, and social relationships with their surroundings and are established by these relationships, just as they help to reestablish their surroundings again and again. In short, we ask: what does the presence or absence of churches and monasteries “do”?

CV

ORCID: 0000-0002-6930-709X; Researcher ID: K-5288-2015; Scopus ID: 26668023100

Education and key qualifications

31/05/2009 PhD. in Sociology, Faculty of Social Sciences / Institute of Sociological Studies, Charles University Prague, Czech Republic

2001 M.A. in Ethnology, Faculty of Arts/ Institute of Ethnology Department, Charles University Prague, Czech Republic

Current position(s)

2014 – present Senior lecturer and researcher , Faculty of Social Sciences / Institute of Sociological Studies, Charles University Prague, Czech Republic

Previous position(s)

2022 – 2023 Fulbright Visiting Scholar, School of Humanities and Sciences/ Department of Anthropology, Stanford University, USA 2013 – 2017 Junior member of a research cluster / team of the University Centre of Excellence for the Research of Collective Memory , Faculty of Social Sciences / Institute of Sociological Studies, Charles University Prague, Czech Republic

Research experience

Grants and fellowships since PhD (in the position of project leader)

2026 – 2026 Agency of presence and absence of religious buildings, TANDEM Cefres CU-CNRS (with Anne Fornerod)

2022 – 2023 New monastic communities and networks: Spirituality arising from the contradictions of secular societies (Fulbright – Masaryk scholarship at Stanford University, California)

2019 – 2022 Dynamics of churches´ moral economies in the Czech and Slovak Republics in the context of restitutions of church properties and church-state (Grant Agency of the Czech Republic)

2019 – 2022 Society and church in the process of restitution of church properties: Support of participation (Technological Agency of the Czech Republic)

2016 – 2017 Moral economy of Czech and Austrian monasteries (Aktion Czech Republic- Austria)

2012 – 2014 Space and Social Memory in the Czech Borderlands after 1990: Post-Socialist Management of Tangible and Intangible Traces of the German Past (postdoc project, Grant Agency of the Czech Republic)

Grants and fellowships since PhD (in the position of researcher)

2024 – 2026 The role of religion in the integration of migrants from Ukraine and changes in the Czech religious landscape. Grant Agency of the Czech Republic, led by Tomáš Havlíček

2023–2024 Post-secular Approach to Memory Processes in Central-Eastern Europe, Visegrad Funds, led by Zuzana Bogumil

2013 – 2014 On the way to the spirituality of collaboration? The laymen and clergy in the Czech Catholic church. In the frame of the project Identity of clergy in the 20th century, led by Jiří Hanuš

2008 – 2010 How is the religious reality produced? Apparitions and possessions as a practical and collective endeavor. Grant Agency of the Czech Republic, led by Zdeněk Konopásek

Selected publications

Spalová, B., Pelikán, V., & Liška, M. (2024). Religious–secular as non-competitive: Encouraging participative church in a Czech Catholic diocese. Social Compass, 71(2), 365–386. DOI

Spalová, B., & Gajdoš, A. (2024). Church Life LIVE! Ritual innovations and repertoires of belonging in Czech and Slovak Christian communities during the COVID-19 pandemic. Interdisciplinary Journal for Religion and Transformation in Contemporary Society, 10(1), 252–280. DOI

Spalová, B., Lukeš Rybanská, I., Gajdoš, A., Tížik, M., Frantová, V., Nosál, M., Pelikán, V., Beláňová, A., Čada, K., Pařil, V., Müllner, V., & Parks, T. (2023). Vize zdaru, vize zmaru: Proměny církví v Česku a na Slovensku v kontextu restitucí [Visions of success, visions of failure: Transformations of churches in Czechia and Slovakia in the context of restitutions of church properties] (1st ed.). Praha: Karolinum. ISBN 978-80-246-5623-6.

Spalová, B., & Tesárek, J. (2022). Other time: Construction of temporality in contemporary Benedictine monasteries. In M. Brenišínová & L. Panušková (Eds.), (Trans)missions: Monasteries as sites of cultural transfers (pp. 113–128). Archaeopress. PDF

Spalová, B. (2022). Discretio and the golden mean: Working out frugality and thrift in two Czech post-socialist monasteries. In C. Alexander & D. Sosna (Eds.), Thrift and its paradoxes: From domestic to political economy (pp. 117–139). Berghahn Books. Dokumen.pub

Spalová, B. & Jonveaux, I. 2021. Monastère et société : les échanges entre le monastère et la société dans le contexte des restitutions des biens ecclésiaux. Social Compass, 68(4), 634-652. DOI

Spalová, B., & Lukeš Rybanská, I. (2021). Translating secular–religious divide: Everyday negotiation of Christian distinctiveness in Catholic schools in Czechia and Slovakia. Journal of Beliefs and Values, 43(4), 375–395.DOI

Jonveaux, I., & Spalová, B. (2018). The economy of stability in Catholic monasteries in the Czech Republic and Austria. Annual Review of the Sociology of Religion, 9, 269–296. DOI

Spalová, B. (2017). Remembering the German past in the Czech lands: A key moment between communicative and cultural memory. History and Anthropology, 28(1), 84–109. DOI

Spalová, B. (2017). Remembering the German past in the Czech lands: A key moment between communicative and cultural memory. History and Anthropology, 28(1), 84–109. DOI

CEFRES Team, Non classé

Marija Martinović – Research & CV

Unification and disunity: philosophy of the socialist crisis in Yugoslavia (1945–1990)

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

Marija Martinović is a PhD student in philosophy and Slavic studies at the École doctorale 20 at Sorbonne University, affiliated with the Eur’Orbem research unit (UMR 8224, CNRS/Sorbonne University). A member of the “Passage” junior research laboratory within Eur’Orbem, she is writing a thesis under the supervision of Philippe Gelez and Daniel Baric entitled Unification and disunity: philosophy of the socialist crisis in Yugoslavia (1945–1990). 

From a philosophical, political, and historical perspective, this project interrogates the ideological, moral, and symbolic conditions of the fall of Yugoslav socialism. Drawing on the distinction between unification and inclusion, she proposes a conceptual rethinking of the Yugoslav crisis based on its internal contradictions: the concealment of diversity in the name of proclaimed diversity, and the resulting disillusionment within a regime which based itself on an ideology of national cohesion. This study therefore seeks to clarify the philosophical mechanisms of disunity, in dialogue with the works of Slavoj Žižek, Milovan Djilas, and Balkan critical traditions.

By orienting this thesis around a comparative approach between political philosophy, sociology and history of ideas, it interrogates the specificity of Yugoslav ways of thinking which are often founded on an empirical logic to social observation and philosophical conceptualisation distinct from Western models. She clarifies the passage from Yugoslav socialism to the post-Socialist era, understood as a process of transition and a redefinition of collective, moral, and religious identities. 

Her recent works include a critical report on the work of Sacha Markovic, La Yougoslavie que racontent les humanistes marxistes (to appear in the review Balkanologie, 2025), as well as a presentation from the international conference “Ivan Illich, a century of critical thinking” (Cres, Croatia, 2025) entitled The Influence of Ivan Illich: the Case of Slavoj Žižek”, which will soon be published.

Marija Martinović teaches modern and classical literature whilst undertaking her research into the philosophical forms of crisis, secularisation, and national identity in the post-Yugoslav space. She is a visiting fellow at CEFRES as part of a research trip devoted to the comparative study of ideological crises in Central Europe and the Balkans.

CV

Education

2023-present: Doctoral candidate (ED20, Lettres Sorbonne Université) under the supervision of Philippe Gelez (Paris 4) and Daniel Baric (Paris 4). Doctoral research under the title “« Unification et désunion : philosophie de la crise socialiste en Yougoslavie (1945-1990)”

2021-2022: Master’s degree (year 2), research in philosophy and society, Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University (mention bien)

Thesis under the supervision of Philippe Buttgen (Paris 1): “Élucidation de l’échec du socialisme yougoslave, à travers l’Idée communiste inclusive de Slavoj Žižek.”

2021-2022: Erasmus (courses and oral/written exams conducted in English), Sapienza University in Rome, Italy (mention très bien)

2020-2021: Master’s degree (year 1), research in philosophy and society, Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University (mention assez bien)

Thesis under the supervision of Magali Bessonne (Paris 1): La religion comme nécessité morale au bien chez Rousseau

2019-2020: International programme (courses and oral/written exams conducted in Serbian (cyrillic)), University of Belgrade, Serbia (mention très bien)

2017-2020: Undergraduate degree, philosophy and humanities, Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University (mention bien)

2016-2017: Baccalauréat in literature, Louise de Marillac private lycée, Paris (mention bien)

EFB – École Française de Belgrade, Belgrade

Professional Experience

2025-present: Research fellowship (six months) to assist doctoral research, CEFRES

2024-present: Teacher of modern and classical literatures (second degré), Académie de Créteil (Paris and Versailles)

2022: Culture journalist and assistant editor, FNAC-DARTY, Ivry sur Seine (https://www.fnac.com/Le-blog-de-Marija/cc914/w-4)

  • Monitoring cultural news, steering the editorial line of L’Eclaireur (https://leclaireur.fnac.com)
  • Conception and editing of articles
  • Proficiency in WordPress, SEO and HTML

2019: Project manager for books – philosophy category, VULKAN, Belgrade.

  • Market research on philosophy books, selection of titles to be published and translated

Affiliations

2025-present: Visiting fellow, CEFRES, Czech Republic

2023-present: Research unit UMR 8224 Eur’Orbem (East-Central Europe and the Balkans), Sorbonne University/CNRS

Laboratoire junior at UMR 8224 Eur’Orbem under the title of “Passage”

Publications

October 2025: « Compte rendu de : Sacha Markovic, La Yougoslavie que racontent les humanistes marxistes : aux origines intellectuelles et culturelles des transitions yougoslaves, entre socialisme et nationalisme, des années 1920 aux années 1970 », Balkanologie (to be published)

Conferences

September 2025: Conference at Cres, Croatia: Ivan Illich, a century of critical thinking, on ways of addressing global crises. Presentation: “The influence of Ivan Illich: the case of Slavoj Žižek”, with Sorbonne University (collaborative work to be published)

CEFRES Team

Domenico Scagliusi – Research & CV

“The court of heirs: memory of the GULAG in contemporary Russian-language literature (2000-2022)”

Research areas 1 and 2: Displacements, “Dépaysements” and Discrepancies: People, Knowledge and Practices & Norms and transgressions

His research focuses on fiction published in the Russian language between 2000 and 2020 which places particular attention on the GULAG and the transmission of its memory in the post-Soviet space. These works, particularly significant at the turn of the 2010s (Jones 2024), form part of the global rise in the study of “post memory” (Hirsch 2012) within a political framework underscored by tensions between Russia and those other states which emerged from the dissolution of the USSR (Koposov 2018), as well as Putin’s increasingly repressive policies regarding his opponents.

His research therefore explores a period in which the memory of the GULAG is politically significant, as important questions are raised about the relationship between the state and its citizens, just as they are about Russia and its neighbours. This body of literature is henceforth considered as an expression of the variety of ideological positions which divide Russian-speaking intellectual debate and which find a major battleground in the history of Soviet repressions. In the absence of judicial sanctions for the violence committed by the Soviet state or of an agreed consensus on how to interpret those events, fiction allows the creation of a symbolic space where the act of storytelling is configured as a way of passing judgement on the past.

His thesis addresses these problems through a study of nine works of fiction published between 2001 and 2019, in which retrospective judgement is brought by a contemporary character to the writing of the novel: “the heir”. The development of this notion – already apparent in the field of memory studies (Jurgenson & Prstojevic 2012; Barjonet 2022; Panico 2024) – constitutes one of the issues in this research. Through the figure of the heir, these texts depict a process of subjective reinvestment in the past, examining both narrative development and the interplay between the discourses of various “memory actors” (Bogumił 2018) at work in the post-Soviet context.

 

Education

 

  • September 2022 – present: PhD student in Slavic studies at Sorbonne University / Eur’ORBEM under the supervision of Hélène Mélat and Luba Jurgenson.
  • 15-19th April 2024: Spring School 4EU+ Pluralities of Memory Spring School: Borderlands of Memory, organised by Charles University, Prague.
  • 11-15th July 2022: Summer School 4EU+ Digital memories: problems, methodologies, theories, organised by the University of Milan
  • 2020–2022: Master’s degree in Russian literature at Sorbonne University

 

Academic Publications (selection)

 

  • « Le cinéma en juge de l’histoire ? Le spectre de l’année 1938 dans le film Le capitaine Volkonogov s’est échappé », Revue des Etudes slaves, vol. XCV, n° 4, 2024, p. 565-580.
  • « Tchapaev devint un zombie, mais il passait encore à la télé. La littérature russe des années 2000 dans les décombres de l’idéologie soviétique », Les Grandes figures historiques dans les lettres et les arts, n° 14, 2025. Online : https://www.peren-revues.fr/figures-historiques/651?lang=en. 
  • « Zapretnye rukopisi. Arheologija semejnoj pamjati v sovremennoj russkoj literature » [Les manuscrits interdits. Archéologie de la mémoire familiale dans la littérature russe contemporaine], Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie, n° 193/3, 2025, pp. 212-227.

 

Presentations (selection)

 

  • « D. Bykov, Z. Prilepin: 20 let opravdanij sovetskogo Terrora » [D. Bykov et Z. Prilepine en miroir : 20 ans de justifications des répressions soviétiques]. International seminar Being a writer under Putin. Inalco, Paris, March 2025.
  • « Echoes of Injustice: Russian-speaking literature coming to terms with the Soviet repressions ». Congrès annuel de l’Association canadienne des slavistes. Montréal, June 2024.
  • « Performing the Duty of Memory: Five Time Travel Narratives of the Great Patriotic War ». International seminar Historical Past and Contemporary Propaganda in the Global Context. Bard College et Smolny Beyond Borders, Berlin, June 2024.

 

Teaching Experience (selection)

 

  • September 2022 – May 2025: Course “Commentaire littéraire”, weekly seminar for second year Russian studies undergraduate students, Sorbonne University
  • September 2022 – May 2023: Course “Auteur, narrateur, personnage”, biweekly seminar for master’s students specialising in literature in the programme “Monde russe”, Sorbonne University

 

Organisation of academic sessions

 

  • April 2023 – present: series of sessions “L’Observatoire du Sensible” (Sorbonne University & University of Lille): series of sessions with contemporary Russian-speaking authors, among whom: Maria Stepanova, Daria Serenko, Galina Rymbu, Sergei Lebedev, Sasha Filipenko.
  • 18-20th June 2025: Conference of Collettivo Giovani Slavisti, University of Naples
  • 4-7th April 2023: Seminar Sexe, sexualité, relations sexuelles dans la science-fiction, 11th international seminar of Stella Incognita. Sorbonne University (UFR d’études slaves, faculté des Lettres) & l’École Polytechnique (Département Langues et Cultures et Chaire arts et sciences); National School of Decorative Arts – PSL and and Fondation Daniel et Nina Carasso; Research workshops at Eur’ORBEM (Sorbonne University) and LinX, junior workshop “Passage”; the Institute of Slavic Studies and Cinéma Le André des Arts

 

Other activities and affiliations

 

  • June 2025 – present: Member of the administrative council of the Institute of Slavic Studies
  • September 2024 – present: Co-coordinator (with Sarah Gruszka) of the field “Histoire, mémoire et arts” of the research collective Coruscant, European branch of the Russia Program at the Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies (IERES), George Washington University.
  • September 2023 – present: Representative of the Junior Workshop “Passage”, composed of doctoral students from UMR Eur’ORBEM