This project is carried out within the TANDEM CNRS-SAV program developed by the Slovak Academy of Sciences (SAV), the CNRS Humanities & Social Sciences (CNRS SHS), and CEFRES.
Project principal investigators:
Silvester TRNOVEC (Institute of Oriental Studies, SAV / CEFRES)
Romain TIQUET (Institut des mondes africains, CNRS / CEFRES)
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.
Contact: aksnowicz_adam@phd.ceu.edu
Research Area 1 – Displacements, “Dépaysements,” and Descrepancies: People, Knowledge, and Practices
Adam M. Aksnowicz is a doctoral candidate at the Department of History, Central European University in Vienna, Austria. His dissertation, Towards What Homeland? (Trans)National Armies in Exile and Renegotiations of Polish and Czechoslovak National Narratives, 1938-48, under the supervision of Constantine Iordachi and Charles Shaw, is being developed in cooperation with CEFRES Research Area 1.
My dissertation reassesses the historical phenomenon of national armed forces in exile during the Second World War by analyzing military nation-building projects of Polish armies in exile and the Czechoslovak resistance abroad from transnational, comparative, and global perspectives. Building from my previous MA thesis entitled, “Without Lwów and Wilno There is No Poland” The Cause of Kresy in Exiled Polish Army Press and Propaganda in Italy, 1944-1946, my current project explores conceptual-historical complexities and persistent legacies of national-military exile(s) in renegotiations of nation, state, and homeland between the downfall of the young post-Versailles republics and the radical post-war reconstruction of East Central Europe. By contextualizing Polish and Czechoslovak military exile within transnational, global, and imperial-colonial entanglements of Europe’s early twentieth-century’ “age of catastrophe” (Doumanis 2016), I aim to move beyond dominant national-patriotic approaches and binary Cold War frameworks to contribute to new critical scholarship of exiled state apparatuses during WWII and engage with interdisciplinary discussions surrounding topics like exile, civil-military relations, transnationalities of nation-building, and collective narrative (re)construction.
As a researcher with a background in both sociology and history, my research to date has primarily focused on historical and collective memory studies of interwar, wartime, and early Cold War Poland/Polish diaspora in global contexts. However, during my time in Prague with CEFRES, I look forward to further developing the comparative Czechoslovak dimension of my dissertation by visiting the Czech state archives as well as discussing other analogous cases of exile/displacement with like-minded colleagues to strengthen the project’s overall conceptual framework.
Education
Teaching Experience
Conferences & Summer Schools
Publications and Projects
Research Area 3 – Objects, Traces, Mapping: Everyday Experience of Spaces
Introduction
This dissertation examines the cultural and historical memory embedded in the rural and semi-rural landscapes of 18th-century Hungary. It explores how local communities perceived, shaped, and remembered their surroundings, focusing on the material traces, spatial practices, and symbolic representations that connected people to the land over time.
Research Questions
Methodology
The research combines approaches from environmental history, historical anthropology, and critical cartography. It draws on a variety of historical sources:
The project uses microhistorical case studies from specific regions of historical Upper Hungary to reconstruct the interaction between people and landscape.
Empirical Foundation:
The primary empirical basis includes:
Contribution to CEFRES Research Area 3 – Objects, Traces, Mapping
The dissertation contributes to the understanding of landscape as a palimpsest of objects and traces—a space marked by layers of past meanings, uses, and representations. It proposes that the memory of place is not only transmitted through texts or rituals but also inscribed into the terrain through spatial practices and preserved physical remnants. By investigating how people inhabited and interpreted their environment, this research offers a historical perspective on the production of space, connecting tangible objects with intangible memory. It also engages in mapping these traces, both literally (through GIS) and conceptually, as a way to understand how landscapes become historical and cultural archives.
Contact : kajetan.holecek[@]cefres.cz
Research Area 3 – Objects, Traces, Mapping: Everyday Experience of Spaces
My dissertation examines the Jewish position in the urban space of Cheb (Eger), a town on the Czech-German border. Given that the Jewish community in this town is among the oldest and most populous in the Lands of the Bohemian Crown, it could be seen as representative of other medieval Jewish communities. The local context thus serves as a valuable case study for understanding the role of Jewish residents in the environment of medieval towns. The primary objective of my research is to define the role of Jews in medieval urban society by analysing social interactions within the urban space in answering the question: How should we speak and think of the Jews in the urban space? Continue reading Kajetán Holeček – Research & CV
Research Area 3 – Objects, Traces, Mapping: Everyday Experience of Spaces
Contact: thomas.chopard[@]ehess.fr
Thomas Chopard is a historian and assistant professor at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, at the Centre of Historical Research (EHESS/CRH). His research focuses on the history of anti-Jewish persecution and Jewish migration in Central and Eastern Europe. His early work focused on the pogroms and anti-Jewish violence in Ukraine during the revolutionary period, before contributing to the ERC project Lubartworld retracing the trajectories of the Jews of the Polish town of Lubartów. His current research is at the intersection of the study of forced displacement suffered by Jews during the Second World War and the history of Stalinist repression.
