Czech Society

I have been conducting research in the Czech Republic since 1992. My most recent
ethnography, Traversing: Embodied Lifeworlds in the Czech Republic (2020), focuses on
movement, politics, and subjectivity, combining ethnography with the philosophical insights
of Martin Heidegger and Jan Patočka to examine the historical and social resonances of
activities as diverse as walking through the city and adolescent lessons in ballroom dancing.
Prior to this, I undertook a study of the politicization of childhood asthma in the Czech
Republic, as detailed in One Blue Child.

I have also studied the impact of the 1989 revolution on gender and feminism, as well as
writing about masculinity, imagination and memories of political change.

PUBLICATIONS

2022. “Footsteps through the City: Encounters with Social Justice in Czech Urban Landscapes.” Sentient Ecologies: Xenophobic Imaginaries of Landscape. Eds. Alexandra Coțofană and Hikmet Kuran. Oxford: Berghahn Books. Pp. 229-250.

2020. “First in Masks? How Czechs Wore Face Masks When There Weren’t Any
Available.” Somatosphere: Science, Medicine and Anthropology. July 21.

2019. “Patients, Pharmaceuticals, and Time: Reclaiming the Temporal Ambiguities of Illness and Healing through an Ethnographic Analysis of Asthma.” Cargo: Journal for Cultural and Social Anthropology. 2017(1-2): 1-18.

2017. “Efficacious Holidays: The Therapeutic Dimensions of Pleasure and Discipline in Czech Respiratory Spas.” Medical Anthropology Quarterly. 32(1):42-58.

2017. “Reciprocal Responsibilities: Struggles over (New and Old) Social Contracts, Environmental Pollution, and Childhood Asthma in the Czech Republic.” In Competing Responsibilities: The Politics and Social Ethics of Responsibility in Contemporary Life. Susanna Trnka and Catherine Trundle, eds. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Pp. 71-95.

2015. “Playing Cowboys and Indians: The Therapeutics of Nostalgia.” Canadian Slavonic Papers/Revue canadienne des slavistes. Special theme issue Nostalgia in East and Central Europe. 57(3-4): 284-98.

2013. w/ H. Haukanes. “Memory, Imagination and Belonging across Generations: Perspectives from Post-socialist Europe and Beyond.” In Recasting Futures and Pasts: Imagination and Memory across Generations in Post-Socialist Europe. Focaal: Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology. 66: 3-13.

2013. “Forgotten Pasts and Fearful Futures in Czechs’ Remembrances of Communism.” In Recasting Futures and Pasts: Imagination and Memory across Generations in Post-Socialist Europe. Focaal: Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology. 66: 36-46.

2012. “When the World Went Colour: Emotions, Senses and Spaces in Contemporary Accounts of the Czechoslovak Velvet Revolution." Emotion, Space and Society. 5(3): 45-51.