C.V. | Current Project | Publications

Research Interests
Political anthropology, anthropology of the future, conspiracy, conspirituality, prefigurative politics, pseudoscience, populism, affect

Research Area
Prague, Czech Republic

Departmental Activities
Working Groups: Lived Utopias, Science and Universality
Research Topic:

Profile

I initially joined the department ‘Anthropology of Politics and Governance’ as a student assistant in December 2020 before becoming a PhD candidate in February 2022. Previously, I received my BA in Religious Studies from Charles University in Prague and my MA in Anthropology from Leipzig University.

My PhD project is a study of the political mobilizations within the Czech conspiritual milieu. I follow people who experienced what they call “Awakening,” and their attempts to pursue “free life” outside of influence of nefarious hidden forces. The build permaculture gardens, engage in collective rituals, or develop new cryptocurrencies – but most importantly, they frame these actions as an attempt to enact a broader change. I am interested in the way imaginaries of freedom, community, and power become intertwined with affects, and how conspirituality can mobilize people to search for a new modes of political life.

My MA thesis dealt with related topics, focusing on alternative healers and health-seekers in Prague. In this study I examined how long-term engagement with alternative medicine shaped health-seekers’ lives and identities during Covid-19 pandemic, as their continuous healing became entangled with the language of conspiracy and suspicion. 

I am also interested in boundaries between science and “pseudoscience” and in the popular imaginaries which surround certain technoscientific projects, such as AI or vaccinations.