Our Team
Matthew Rampley
Matthew Rampley is Extraordinary Professor of History of Art at Masaryk University, Brno. His research interests focus on theory, criticism and the historiography of central Europe, as well as the art and architecture since the mid-19th century. Publications include: Visions of the Future: Modern Architecture, Catholicism and the State in Central Europe, 1918-1939 (2025), The Museum Age in Austria-Hungary (2021, with Nóra Veszprémi and Markian Prokopovych), Liberalism, Nationalism and Design Reform in the Habsburg Empire (2020, with Nóra Veszprémi and Markian Prokopovych) and The Vienna School of Art History: Empire and the Politics of Scholarship (2013).
He oversees the project as a whole, while also focusing on three of its themes → Questions of Methodology, → Art and Cultural Criticism, and → A ‘Civilising Mission?’ Czechs Abroad.
Anna Řičář Libánská
Anna Řičář Libanská (she/her) is a researcher at Masaryk University and also a PhD candidate at the Center for Ibero-American Studies in Charles University, Prague. She is also affiliated with the Centre for African Studies Charles University. Her research interests include: representations of Indigenous Peoples of Americas; representations of otherness in Czech (pop)culture throughout history; the history of gender and the body; colonialism and its contemporary reflections. She draws on feminist and decolonial theories. She has been a co-author on two publications which will be out in 2025: Historia oculta – Representación de la mujer en la conquista y colonización del Nuevo mundo and Hlasy dekoloniálního feminismu (Voices of Decolonial Feminism – an anthology of collaborative translations of decolonial feminist texts into Czech).
Within the project, she focuses on topics of → Exhibitionary Practices and → Popular Etnographic Imagery.
Veronika Rollová
Veronika Rollová is a researcher at Masaryk University in Brno, and also a lecturer in design history at the Academy of Art, Architecture and Design in Prague, where she contributes to a Czech Ministry of Culture-funded research project focused on the history of arts and crafts education in the Czech lands since the mid-19th century. Her research interests encompass the design and architecture of Central Europe in the 20th century, particularly in relation to the broader societal and political context. She co-edited the volume The Future is Hidden in the Present: Architecture and Czech Politics 1945–1989 (2021) and authored the monograph Pražský hrad na cestě ke komunistické utopii (1948–1968) [Prague castle en route to a Communist utopia] (2019).
Within the project her work focuses on two areas within the research project: → Everyday Material Culture and → Agents of civilising Mission? Czechs Abroad.
Patrick Laviolette
Patrick Laviolette is a social anthropologist and researcher at Masaryk University with a background in landscape and material culture studies. Patrick’s research interests include alternative travel, risk and adventure sports, intellectual biography as well as theoretical approaches to European art, architecture and contemporary archaeology. He is co-editor of Ethnologia Europaea (a journal in Berghahn’s Open Anthro series). Recent publications include: Publications include: Hitchhiking: Cultural Inroads (2021), Repair, Brokenness, Breakthroughs: Ethnographic Responses (2019, with Fran Martínez); Extreme Landscapes of Leisure (2016) and Things in Culture, Culture in Things (2013, with Anu Kannike).
Within the project, he focuses on three themes: → Methodological Preliminaries, → Everyday Material Culture, and → Popular Etnographic Imagery.
Irene Appeaning Addo
Irene Appeaning Addo is an Architect and a Research Fellow at the Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana. She lectures on African Art history. Irene’s research focuses on postcolonial African Architecture and Urban Studies. Her research interests encompass understanding the inequalities and marginalisations associated with urbanisation and urbanism, particularly of African urban experiences. She is an Associate Editor of Architecture and Soft Power (forthcoming in the Third World Quarterly Journal, 2025). Her recent publications include Examining Change and Permanence in Traditional Earthen Construction in Ghana (2025), Blurring the Boundaries: Everyday Urbanism in Accra Airport City I (2024), New Homes for a New State: Foreign Ideas in Ghana’s Public Housing Programmes (2022), and Assessing Residential Satisfaction among Low-income Households in Multi-habited Dwellings in Selected Low-income Communities in Accra (2016).
Irene serves as an external international consultant for the project.
Lina Degtyaryova
Lina Degtyaryova is a researcher at Uzhhorod State University, specializing in the architectural history of former Subcarpathian Ruthenia and the First Czechoslovak Republic, with a focus on legislative frameworks. She co-authored the monograph Architekt Ľudovít Oelschläger. Dielo na Ukrajine / Architect Ľudovít Oelschläger. Works in Ukraine (2024) with Adriana Priatková and Oleg Olashyn, which received the Slovak Martin Kusý Professor Award (2024) for contributing to architectural research, history, theory, and criticism. Lina is also a co-founder and contributor to the public research and education project Uzhhorod Modernism (http://am.umodernism.com/en/).
Lina serves as an external international consultant for the project.
Phạm Thị Thủy Chung
Phạm Thị Thủy Chung is a researcher at the Vietnamese Academy of Social Sciences, Hanoi, with expertise in cultural studies, museum studies, and religious heritage. She has extensive experience working in research institutions, scientific journals, and museums, including the Vietnamese Museum of Ethnology, the Journal of Museum and Anthropology, the Institute for Religious Studies, and the Journal of Religious Studies. Chung's research primarily focuses on living heritage. Her PhD dissertation, titled Tuk Ngo of the Khmer in the South of Vietnam: From the Community to the Museum, explored the cultural transformations of religious objects in both community life and museum contexts, and was completed in 2021.
She serves as an external international consultant for the project.
Avishek Ray
Avishek Ray is an Associate Professor of Cultural Studies at the National Institute of Technology Silchar (India). He is trained in literary and cultural studies, and his research pivots around travel and mobility, visual culture, digital media and postcolonialism. He is the author of The Vagabond in the South Asian Imagination: Representation, Agency & Resilience (2022), and co-author of Digital Expressions of the Self(ie): The Social Life of Selfies in India (2024). His research appears in South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, Contemporary South Asia, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, Transfers: Interdisciplinary Journal of Mobility Studies, Tourism, Culture & Communication, among others. In 2021, he was awarded a Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence Fellowship.
Avishek serves as an external international consultant for the project.
Markéta Rychterová
Markéta Rychterová is a PhD student in the Digital Culture and Creative Industries programme at the Masaryk University. In her research she focuses on the articulation of values in cultural activities and the possibilities of evaluating the benefits and impact of activities in the cultural and creative industries. In addition, she focuses on fields such as festival studies, management of cultural activities, their financing and sustainability. Since 2017, she has been working as the head of project management at the platform for contemporary art PAF (Olomouc, CZ), and is a member of the cultural non-grant fundraising platform artikula.
Markéta is the project administrator.