In the early 19th century, some thinkers dreamed of uniting all Slavs… or at least federating them. Panslavism, as this intellectual and political current was called, was a bold attempt. However, along the way, it encountered many obstacles, both internal and external. In episode 104 of Czechostacja, a podcast hosted by Jakub Medek, Karolina Ćwiek-Rogalska talks about the history of panslavism and Czech entanglements with it, Russia’s role in these ideas, Polish and Slovak perspectives, and why many believers quickly lost their illusions. She also examines what remains of Slavic unity today—in a world shaped by war and modern nation-states.

Link to the podcast you can find here.

In early 2026, Karina visited the Sudetendeutsches Museum in Munich. She took the train ride across borders only to learn more about Bohemian history as the institution serves as an enclave of Czech heritage within Bavaria. During her visit, the museum featured an exhibition devoted to another notable native of Vratislavice/Maffersdorf, the renowned automotive engineer Ferdinand Porsche, who grew up just some hundred years and a few hundred meters from Karina’s. She was particularly interested in comparing the Munich exhibition with the one at Porsche’s birthplace in Vratislavice, which is run by the Škoda car producing company (nowadays part of the VW concern). Whereas the Vratislavice exhibition focuses exclusively on Porsche’s technical achievements, the Sudetendeutsches Museum also addresses the political implications of his work for the Third Reich. Both exhibitions illustrate how technology and technical innovation can serve as a unifying and non-threatening narrative for interpreting the past.

Call for Submissions – EASA 2026 Conference, panel P053: Entangled Ruins: Polarised Temporalities and the Afterlives of Decay

We warmly invite scholars and researchers to submit proposals for Panel P053, convened by our PI, Karolina Ćwiek-Rogalska and Václav Sixta from the Charles University, at the EASA 2026 Conference.

The panel explores ruins as powerful materialisations of tension between decay and renewal, loss and endurance. Ruins reveal collisions between past and future and expose polarised temporalities shaping contemporary worlds, while also opening spaces for care, reflection, and re-imagined relations.

Focusing on the social, political, and material afterlives of decay, the panel will examine ruination as a dynamic and relational process: one that highlights contested values and unequal power, yet also gestures toward new possibilities beyond binary thinking.

Aligned with the conference theme “Anthropology: Possibilities in a Polarised World,” organizers welcome anthropological, ethnographic, geographical, theoretical, and creative contributions engaging with ruins, memory, heritage, materiality, and temporal entanglements.

Suggested keywords:
Ruins and Ruination · Temporalities · Memory and Heritage · Materiality and Decay · Anthropocene · Entanglement · Afterlives of Ruins

More information and submission details you can find here.

The popular conviction, popularized by Bram Stoker’s Dracula, is that vampires live primarily in Transylvania. However, as Josef Váchal, a Czech writer, visual artist, and book printer, sought to demonstrate, the main headquarters of these creatures lies elsewhere: in Slovakia.

Karolina discovered this book during one of her archival searches at the Museum of Czech Literature in Prague. She proposed discussing it among our team, particularly because the narrative is set not only in Slovakia in general but also in Hauerland, a region studied by both Michal and Karina.

Over the course of the seminar, the reading gradually shifted from a search for ghosts and supernatural beings to a critical conversation about Czech colonialism in Slovakia during the interwar period. How does a Czech visitor behave in Slovakia—as a tourist and as a keen observer of social life? And how did such encounters unfold during the First Czechoslovak Republic? Can we read Váchal’s text as an ethnographic source? These were the guiding questions of our discussion.

Although the text was not an easy read, we welcomed its depictions of the region and the opportunity to approach our case studies from yet another angle. This time, the discussion opened up perspectives drawn from tourism studies and postcolonial theory.