Newest addition to assotiations research

Mgr. Kateřina Mildnerová, Ph.D., is a Czech Africanist and social and cultural anthropologist living in Hranice na Moravě. Since 2015, she has been working at the Department of Sociology, Andragogy and Cultural Anthropology at Palacký University in Olomouc. Since 2019, she has been the chairperson of the Czech Association of African Studies. During her lifetime, she has conducted dozens of field research projects in Zambia, Benin and Namibia and lectured at several universities in Africa and Europe. She specializes in the anthropology of religion and medical anthropology. Her long-standing research interests include issues of magic, witchcraft, traditional healing and albinism in sub-Saharan Africa, as well as African art, collective identity and migrants' conceptions of home. She is the author of dozens of scholarly articles and five monographs of her own: My Neighbour is a Witch (2011), Drinking Fetishes: Religion and Art in Benin (2012), From Where Does the Bad Wind Blow (2015), and Black Falcons. The Moved Fates of Namibian Children Raised in Czechoslovakia (2020) and Namibian Czechs (2020). She is the co-author of the successful documentary film Black Czechs (2022) and the founder of the non-profit organization Spolek na podporu Namibian Czechs. She is currently working on Born Different, a project about living with albinism in Africa, together with Mozambican photographer Antonio Cossa.

Hana Horáková is Associate Professor of Social Anthropology at the Faculty of Arts, Palacky University in Olomouc. She holds a habilitation degree in Social Anthropology from the Faculty of Humanities, Charles University, Prague (2012). She holds a PhD in African Studies from the Institute of the Near East and Africa, Charles University (2005). She was President of the Czech Association of African Studies between 2013 and January 2019.
Her research activities include anthropology of tourism and rural studies, and anthropology of sub-Saharan Africa focusing on politics of identity and nationalism. She has conducted fieldwork in South Africa, exploring culture in the making and the nation-building process in post-apartheid South Africa. Her recent research focuses on cultural tourism in Southern Africa and memory politics in Namibia.
She has published on aspects of the above research topics in international journals such as Anthropology Southern Africa, The Anthropology of East Europe Review; Asian and African Studies; Modern Africa. Politics, History and Society; Archiv Orientalni. Journal of African and Asian Studies, among others. She has written and/or edited more than eight books within African Studies and Social Anthropology. Her recent books include Africa on the Move. Shifting Identites, Histories, Boundaries (with S. Rudwick and M. Schmiedl, 2020), Knowledge Production in and on Africa (with K. Werkman, 2016), or Global Challenges, Local Reactions. Czech Republic and South Africa (with S. Rudwick, 2014).

Mgr. Alžběta Šváblová, PhD, teaches at the University of Hradec Králové and the University of Vienna, focusing on topics related to conflict and peace, gender, and West Africa. She is also involved in academic writing, writing coaching, and conducts educational seminars in this field.

Klára Trsková studied Portuguese Studies and Film Studies at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague, and the Center for Audiovisual Studies at FAMU. In 2024, she completed her doctoral studies in Romance Literatures at Charles University with her dissertation, "Overcoming Internalized Racial Oppression: Modes of Representation in African Lusophone Written Prose." In addition to African literature written in Portuguese, she also focuses on Mozambican, Angolan, Cape Verdean, and Guinean-Bissauan cinema. She organizes the annual AfroFilmes film showcase at the Ponrepo Cinema in collaboration with the Portuguese Center – IC. In 2023, she participated in the Latin American Studies Association conference in Accra. She translates from Portuguese, produces short films, and works as a film curator at the National Film Archive (NFA).

Nicola Raúl is a PhD candidate in Migration Studies at the Faculty of Arts, Palacký University in Olomouc. She holds degrees in French Philology and Cultural Anthropology, also from the Faculty of Arts at Palacký University. From the beginning of her academic career, her work has focused on connecting cultural and social aspects of a globalized world. Her research is centered on sub-Saharan Africa, particularly Angola, exploring topics such as identity, power, and structural racism, and their impact on migration dynamics and social inequalities. She is currently working at the European Parliament.

Silvester Trnovec is a historian and Africanist working at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Slovak Academy of Sciences in Bratislava. His research focuses on the transformation of African societies in West and North Africa under the conditions of European colonialism in the 19th and 20th centuries. He also conducts research on the historical relations and contacts between the African continent and the territory of present-day Slovakia. Additionally, he serves as the director of the European section of the international project Fontes Historiae Africanae/Sources for the History of Africa, which operates under the auspices of the International Union of Academies in Brussels. The project aims to publish critical editions of sources related to the history of Africa.

Mgr. et Mgr. Vilém Řehák, Ph.D., graduated in African Studies and Political Science from the Faculty of Arts at Charles University and in International Relations from the Faculty of Social Sciences at Charles University. He specializes in contemporary political and economic developments in Africa and its position in international relations and the global economy. He currently works as an analyst at the Research Center of the Association for International Affairs (AMO) with a focus on Sub-Saharan Africa. Within his expertise, he collaborates with various academic and research institutions in the Czech Republic and abroad. Professionally, he has held various positions in public administration and is currently employed at the National Development Bank, where he is responsible for the preparation and implementation of financial instruments in the field of international development cooperation.

He was born on March 23, 1935. He completed hisal university studies in General History at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University, in 1960, and his postgraduate studies (doctoral program) in African History at the Oriental Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic in 1965. Afterward, he worked as a research fellow at the institute until 1974, when he was forced to leave for political reasons. He returned in 1990 and became a member, then the last head, and finally the last employee of the African Department, which was dissolved upon his retirement in 2005. His research focuses primarily on the modern history and culture of Southern African countries (South Africa, Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Malawi), on which he has published seven monographs, around twenty scholarly articles, and numerous popular science pieces. In recent years, he has collaborated with foreign colleagues to compare the living conditions of political prisoners in Czechoslovakia, the former Soviet Union, and South Africa, resulting in the joint publication of two monographs. Around the turn of the century, he frequently conducted study visits to South Africa and its neighboring states. He regularly appears on television and radio discussing African issues.

Jan Prouza earned his master's degree in Political Science – African Studies at the Faculty of Arts, University of Hradec Králové, and his doctoral degree in International Relations and European Studies at the Institute of International Relations and the Metropolitan University Prague. Since 2009, he has been working as an assistant professor at the Department of Political Science at the Faculty of Arts, UHK, where he engages in teaching and research focused on Sub-Saharan Africa, particularly its western regions. His primary research interests include domestic conflicts, (in)stability, and African political systems in general.

Zuzana Uhde specializes in critical social theory, feminist theory, and critical migration and border studies. Her current research focuses on interdisciplinary analyses of the political economy of transnational migration, borders, transnational social reproduction, and the commodification of care, with regional expertise centered on Central Europe and East Africa. She is a research fellow at the Institute of Sociology of the Czech Academy of Sciences and an external collaborator with the School of Women and Gender Studies at Makerere University. She is a member of the steering committee of the COST network Data Matters: Sociotechnical Challenges of European Migration and Border Control (DATAMIG), where she co-leads the Inventory working group.