Research profiles
In this section, you will find important information about the research interests and projects of the department members.
The Department of Philosophy of the Faculty of Arts of the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen focuses on scientific philosophy, primarily on analytical philosophy, philosophy of education, and the history and philosophy of science and technology. This major specialization complements other areas such as the philosophy of religion, aesthetics, or ethics. For more information, please refer to the profile of individual academics.
PhDr. Jitka Bílková, Ph.D.
After completing her studies at the Conservatory of Music in Pilsen, Jitka Bilkova studied the science of culture at Charles University in Prague and the doctoral program Theory and History of Science and Technology at the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen. Her doctoral thesis “The Reflection of the Traditional Chinese Science and Scientific Thought in the Works of Certain British and American Scientists” drew on her long-standing interest in the cultures of India, China, and Japan. Her recent work has been aimed at regional topics relating to Pilsen and the Pilsen region. She teaches courses focusing not only on the Indian, Chinese, and Japanese cultures, but also classical music, theoretical approaches to classical music, and introduction to regional studies.
Further information about Jitka Bílkova’s research interests and projects is found here.
Mgr. Daniela Blahutková, Ph.D.
Daniela Blahutková studied aesthetics and German studies and received both her master’s and doctor’s degrees from Masaryk University in Brno. In her dissertation, she analyzed the narrative prose of the Jewish Austrian writer Joseph Roth. She teaches introductory courses in aesthetics at the University of West Bohemia. She participated in research into Jan Patočka’s reflections on art and literature. She has been involved in cooperation activities with the Bohemicum at the University of Regensburg since 2016.
Further information about Daniela Blahutkova’s research interests and projects is found here.
Mgr. Kryštof Boháček, Ph.D.
Kryštof Boháček is a researcher at the Institute of Philosophy of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. At present, he works in the Department of Philosophy in Pilsen and in the Department of Political Science of the Metropolitan University in Prague. Since 2009 he has been the editor-in-chief of the electronic journal of the Institute of Philosophy of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Aither. He is also the founder of the Czech Plato Society and the Czech Society for the Study of Aristotle. He focuses on the philosophical and classical-philological directions of ancient antiquity and the Greek thinkers of the 6th, and especially the 5th and 4th centuries BC. His main specialization is rhetoric as a philosophical position from a historical and systematic perspective: Aristotle’s rhetoric, neo-rhetoric, neo-sophistic, and other alternative conceptual schemes. The main subject of interest is Plato and classical attic philosophy – sophists, Socrates and Socrates, attic tragedy, furthermore Aristotle. Related interests include the pre-Socratic thinkers of the Western (Doric) branch: educational lyric – Simónides and Pindaros, the dialectics of the Eleatic school – Parmenides and Zénón, the magic-scientific tradition – Empedocles, Homer, and Hésiodos.
For further information about Kryštof Boháček’s research interests and projects is found here.
PhDr. Jana Černá, Ph.D.
Jana Černá, Ph.D. has been working as an assistant professor at the Department of Philosophy of the Faculty of Philosophy of The University of West Bohemia in Pilsen since 2006. At this faculty, she also completed in 2010 her doctoral studies in the Theory and History of Science and Technology with her doctoral thesis ‘La leyenda verde: Spanish Renaissance Science and Philosophy’. She focuses on the cultural history of science and philosophy, mainly during the Renaissance and in the Early Modern Period, with special emphasis on the Ibero-American environment. She published over twenty articles in Czech and international journals, two books (Further and Further Beyond the Pillars of Hercules: Natural Secrets of the New World and Spanish Renaissance Philosophy and Science; Eyewitness Testimonies: Spain, the New World, and Changes in the Paradigm of Scientific Communication; both in Czech). She is currently preparing an international monograph (a habilitation thesis) on the reception of Ibero-American science, especially historia naturalis, in the Central European environment. Jana Černá presented her research in lectures and at conferences both at home and abroad, in Spain, Mexico, Portugal, Great Britain, Croatia, etc. She is the principal investigator or co-investigator of several national and international research projects and her research profited from a number of international internships, mainly in Spain (Madrid, Barcelona, Salamanca, Valencia, Sevilla) and Mexico (Mexico City). She is active in popularisation efforts, for instance in collaboration with the Embassy of Spain, Instituto Cervantes in Prague, Centre of Spanish Culture and Education, or the Study and Research Library of Pilsen Region. The Ibero-American environment is not just the main focus of her professional interests. It is an environment she finds congenial and enriching also on a cultural and emotional level. In other words, it is for her not only a source of knowledge and understanding but also of joy and inspiration.
Further information about Jana Černa’s research interests and projects is found here.
Mgr. Stefanie Dach Ph.D.
Stefanie Dach received her doctor’s degree in 2018 at the University of West Bohemia, defending her thesis on Wilfrid Sellars and scientific realism. In her research, she focuses on various aspects of Sellars’ philosophy, in combination with a general interest in “post-analytic philosophy” and pragmatism. She has published a book on Richard Rorty and post-analytic philosophy as well as several articles on Wilfrid Sellars, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and pragmatism. In her private life, she enjoys reading, tai chi, and board games. She is fascinated by philosophy as an intellectual journey which helps us find out things about ourselves and other people, about what we think and why we think it. Doing philosophy is exploring all these intricate, but fragile mental constructions which people are capable of creating.
Further information about Stefanie Dach’s research interests and projects is found here.
doc. PhDr. Nikolaj Demjančuk, CSc.
Nikolaj Demjančuk studied logic and philosophy of science in the Faculty of Philosophy at Lomonosov Moscow State University, where he defended his doctoral dissertation “Truth and Value in Scientific Knowledge”. He passed his rigorous examination at Charles University in 1990. He continued his postgraduate studies at the same university defending a thesis “Technology as a Subject of Philosophical Reflection”. He habilitated in 2003 in the Faculty of Arts at Masaryk University in Brno, specializing in the field of philosophy with the thesis “Philosophy and Scientific Thought”, for which he was awarded the docent title. He focuses mainly on the philosophy of science. His area of expertise includes topics such as science in cultural contexts, methodology and epistemology of science (comparative studies), the image of science in the philosophy of the 19th and 20th centuries (positivism, neo-Kantianism, phenomenology, analytic philosophy, critical rationalism). He completed his professional stays abroad at the following universities: the University of Leeds and the University of North London in Great Britain, The University of Grenada in Spain, Central European University in Budapest and others.
Further information about Nikolaj Demjančuk’s research interests and projects is found here.
Mgr. et Bc. Dagmar Demjančuková, CSc.
Dagmar Demjančuková completed her studies in philosophy, specializing in theory and history of religion in the Faculty of Philosophy at Lomonosov Moscow State University, where she defended her thesis“Jan Hus as an ideologist of early Protestantism”. She continued her studies and successfully defended her doctoral dissertation “Religion and Secularization Processes: Its Role in the Spiritual Culture”. She also completed her studies in the Theological Faculty at Charles University in Prague in 1994, specializing in the field of philosophy and religion studies, defending her thesis “The Profile of the Evangelical Church of the Czech Brothers”. In her research, she focuses on the philosophy of religion and religion studies. The subjects of her interest are topics such as theory, history and philosophy of religion, problems concerning the relation between culture and religion, the cultural function in Czech and world history, and many others. She completed her professional stays abroad at the following universities: Lomonosov Moscow State University in Russia, the University of Kosice in Slovakia, the University of Grenada and the University of Navarra in Spain and others.
Further information about Dagmar Demjančuková’s research interests and projects is found here.
Mgr. Ludmila Dostálová, Ph.D.
Ludmila Dostálová studied philosophy and logic at Charles University in Prague. Her research focuses on methodology and didactics of logic education. She specializes mainly in the development of e-learning and electronic tools for teaching logic. She has published various textbooks addressing this topic, organized workshops, and taken part in a number of projects on the topic. Moreover, she is interested in the philosophy of Bertrand Russell, Willard van Omar Quine, Donald Davidson and Ludwig Wittgenstein. She acted as a vice dean of the Faculty of Arts at the University of West Bohemia for many years. Currently, she is the head of the Department of Philosophy, where she also teaches logic.
Further information about Ludmila Dostálová’s research interests and projects is found here.
ThLic. Pavel Frývaldský, Th.D.
Pavel Frývaldský studied Catholic theology in the Faculty of Theology at Charles University in Prague. He defended his dissertation “The Interpretation of Christology of Romano Guardini in the Light of Bonaventure’s Theology” at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. He is interested in the 20th-century theology (Romano Guardini, Joseph Ratzinger) and thought of the 20th century (Bonaventura). He is a member of the editorial board of an international Catholic journal “Communio”.
Further information about Pavel Frývaldský’s research interests and projects is found here.
prof. ThDr. Otakar A. Funda, Dr. Theol.
Otakar Antoň Funda studied Protestant Theology at Comenius Protestant Theological Faculty in Prague in 1965 and continued his studies in the Faculty of Arts at Charles University and his postgraduate studies in the Faculty of Theology and Philosophy at the University of Basel, where he graduated in 1971 with a dissertation about Masaryk’s thinking and philosophy (lead by prof. M. Geiger). On account of the Communist authorities who had refused to allow Funda’s Basilian doctor’s degree, he graduated after a series of difficulties in 1981 for the second time in the Comenius Protestant Theological Faculty in Prague under the supervision of prof. A. Molnar with the dissertation „Eirenaius and his Doctrine about Recapitulatio“. His habilitation dealing with the non-religious interpretation of the Christian faith could not be the subject of debate during the Communist era for faithful and political reasons. As proposed by the Faculty of Arts of Masaryk University he was appointed professor of philosophy in 2003. Since 1994, he has worked in the Department of Social Sciences and Philosophy in the Faculty of Education at Charles University, where he has taught philosophy and religion. he has also lectured in the Department of Philosophy in the Faculty of Arts at the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen since 1995. In his theological period, he primarily focused on the concept of demythologization and the existential interpretation of the Christian faith. Since the 1980s he has confined himself as a religionist Within the field of philosophy, he identifies himself with the position of critical rationalism of K. Popper and H. Albert and the evolutionary ontology of A. N. Whitehead and N. Hartmann.
Further information about prof. O. A. Funda’s research interests and projects is found here.
Mgr. Miroslav Hanke, Ph.D.
Miroslav Hanke defended the thesis “John Buridan and the Nominalist Theory of Rationality” and received the doctor’s degree at Palacký University Olomouc in 2010. He worked as a researcher at the University of South Bohemia (2010–2011), and as a lecturer of sociology at Palacký University Olomouc (2011). He has worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Philosophy of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic since 2011, a researcher at the Research Centre for Theory and History of Science within the Department of Philosophy of the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen since 2012, and a lecturer in the Department of Philosophy of the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen since 2017. His research focuses on late-medieval and post-medieval scholastic logic.
Further information about Miroslav Hanke’s research interests and projects is found here.
doc. PhDr. Vladimír Havlík, CSc.
Vladimír Havlík graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy and Faculty of Mathematics and Physics of Charles University, study program: Philosophy and Physics. He earned a habilitation in 2017 at the Faculty of Arts of Masaryk University in Brno with the topic “Problem of emergence in science and philosophy.” He is a scientist at the Institute of Philosophy of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic and at the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen. In 1991, he attended a course “Philosophy of Science – Theory and Experiment” at the International University Center of Dubrovnik. Between October 1992 and March 1993, he did an internship at King’s College London. He deals with philosophical questions of science development, and methodological and epistemological problems of knowledge development, especially in the context of natural sciences – cosmology, physics, biology, and complexity theory. He leads lectures and seminars in the fields of Philosophy of science and History and philosophy of physics. He is the secretary of the Czech Committee for Logic, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science and a member of the IT Committee at the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. He publishes in scientific journals on topics of philosophy and methodology of science, evolution, emergence, and artificial intelligence. E.g. articles: “The naturalness of artificial intelligence from the evolutionary perspective“ (AI and Society, 2018); „Vývoj vědy jako evoluční boj idejí?“ (Filosofický časopis, 2016); and a book: “Anomálie, ad hoc hypotézy a temné stránky kosmologie” (Vyšehrad 2015).
Further information about Vladimír Havlík’s research interests and projects is found here.
Mgr. Petra Hečková, Ph.D.
Petra Hečková studied Theory and History of Art in the Department of Art History at Palacký University in Olomouc. She defended her dissertation “Vojtěch Birnbaum and His Attitude to Orient-oder-Rom Controversy. A Contribution to the Research of Late Antique Architecture after 1900” under the supervision of prof. PhDr. Ivo Hlobil, CSc. and received her PhD in 2009. Petra Heckova specializes in the historiography of art history and the history of cultural heritage. She focuses particularly on the historiography of the art of Antiquity (archaeological knowledge, the afterlife of the artifacts of Antiquity, the development of antiquarianism and collecting practices, the reception and dissemination of the formal prototypes all´antica in the Middle Ages and the modern era). Italian culture, and especially Rome, its history and its frenzied present are not only her professional but also her personal interests. She undertook a research fellowship at the Czech Institute of History in Rome in September 2016 and May 2018.
Further information about Petra Hečkova’s research interests and projects is found here.
PhDr. Petr Jedlička
Petr Jedlička studied sociology with a special focus on quantitative research methods and sociological theory in the Faculty of Social Sciences at Charles University. He defended his master’s thesis “Internet Society: The Social and Economic Impact of new information technologies on society” at the same university in 2000. He undertook short research stays at the University of Konstanz in years 1995 and 1998. Later, he served as a communication advisor for commercial entities, nonprofit organizations, and regional governments, and also as a vice-president of the European Parliament. He defended his rigorous thesis “(Social) Construction of Scientific Facts” at Charles University in 2015. In his thesis, he investigated the condition at the onset of modern science in the context of the works of Ludwik Fleck, David Bloor and Yehuda Elkana. At present, he works mostly in experimental philosophy of science, with a focus on various social and other factors that influence scientists. He has led the research of the project (GAČR 18-08239S) „Objektivita: Experimentální přístup k tradičnímu filosofickému problému“ (Objectivity: Experimental Approach to Traditional Philosophical Problem), in which he employs qualitative, quantitative and experimental methods adopted mostly from the social sciences for the investigation of the Czech scientific community. This is also the topic of his dissertation “Current trends in the Philosophy of Science – Experimental Philosophy and its Applications”.
Further information about Petr Jedlička’s research interests and projects is found here.
Mgr. Karolína Jiráková, Ph.D.
Karolina Jiráková received her master’s degree in European Culture Studies at the University of West Bohemia. Her dissertation was focused on Aristotle’s theory of knowledge and was supervised by Josef Moural. Her major field of study includes ancient science and philosophy with special regard to epistemology. The subjects of her interest are topics such as the thinking of Heraclitus of Ephesus, Aristotle’s work with predecessors and his method in general and Greek tragedy. She undertook a research stay at the University of Fribourg in 2015 under the supervision of Filip Karfik. She is a member of the Czech Plato Society and the Society for Study of Aristotle and His Thought Legacy.
Further information about Karolina Jirakova’s research interests and projects is found here.
Mgr. Petr Jirák, Ph.D.
Petr Jirák received his master’s degree in European Culture Studies at the University of West Bohemia. His dissertation project focuses on Nietzsche´s reflection of science supervised by doc. Jiří Pechar. He is also interested in the study of ancient philosophy and culture.
Further information about Petr Jirak’s research interests and projects is found here.
PhDr. Martina Kastnerová, Ph.D.
Martina Kastnerová graduated (Ph.D.) in 2010 with the doctoral thesis “The Formation of Literary Science in the Context of Renaissance Literature: Searching for an Adequate Interpretative Method for Renaissance Literature” in the Faculty of Arts at the University of West Bohemia in Plzen. She is currently employed as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy of the same faculty, where she teaches the courses Hermeneutics and the Theory of Interpretation or Art in Cultural Context etc. She works as the department academic secretary for science and also the supervisor on the doctoral study program “Theory and History of Science and Technology”. She is a member of the Research Centre for the Theory and History of Science (RCTHS, Plzen), the European Society for Aesthetics and the Czech and Slovak Society for Aesthetics (SPE, SPES). Her research focus is on current theories of interpretation, particularly in English and American contexts, and on Elizabethan poetry and poetics, especially William Shakespeare and Philip Sidney. Her major interests relate to the Sidney circle, the genesis of Robert and Philip Sidneyʼs poetic project on the basis of their communication with intellectuals on the continent, or Neoplatonic concept of love in the Elizabethan and the Jacobean era (Robert Sidney, Mary Wroth, and William Herbert). She has published the monographs “Shakespeare a teorie interpretace” (2011) (Shakespeare and interpretation theory), “Profesionalizace literární kultury: alžbětinská poetika jako součást komplexu renesančního vědění” (2016) ( The self-fashioning of literary culture and poetry as a profession: Elizabethan poetry in the context of Renaissance knowledge) and “Poezie jako vyprávění příběhů. Intelektuální kruh Philipa Sidneyho ” (2018) (Poetry and the sharing of stories: Philip Sidney’s intellectual network). She carried out projects: “Communication and Knowledge: Philip Sidney’s Intellectual Network” (2016-2017) or “The Self-fashioning of Literary Culture and Poetry as a Profession: Elizabethan Poetics in the Context of Renaissance Knowledge” (2015-2016) etc. During the last year, she participated in conferences in London (Royal Hollowayʼs Humanities and Arts Research Institute) and Birmingham (Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues, University of Birmingham) and completed her Erasmus staff training in Renaissance Studies as well as a research stay at The Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-upon-Avon. Renaissance literary culture and literature in general are not just the subject of her academic profession; it also plays an important part in her personal interest in sharing stories.
Further information about Martina Kastnerova’s research interests and projects is found here.
Mgr. Vojtěch Kaše, Ph.D.
Vojtěch Kaše has graduated in the study of religions from Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic. He is currently finishing his doctoral studies jointly supervised at the Masaryk University (study of religions) and the University of Helsinki, Finland (New Testament studies) with a thesis entitled “Tracing the Origins of Eucharistic Magic: On the Role of Cognitive Attraction in the Cultural Transmission of Collective Rituals”. In the study of religions, he has expertise in the field of early Christianity and cognitive theories of religion. On a more general level, his research interest lies in the field of cultural evolution, which is bounded by his interest in computational quantitative methodology. In Helsinki, he was employed as a researcher at the project REECR: Ritual and Emergence of Early Christian Religion: A Socio-Cognitive Analysis (2013-2017). In Brno, he was a member of an interdisciplinary research project GEHIR: Generative Historiography of Religion (2015-2018). At the UWB, he is leading a student research project DiRECT: Distant Reading of Early Christian Texts: Explorations in Socio-Cognitive Interpretation (2018-2020).
Further information about Vojtěch Kaše’s research interests and projects is found here.
doc. PhDr. Radim Kočandrle, Ph.D.
Radim Kočandrle received a master’s degree in philosophy from the Faculty of Philosophy at Palacký University in Olomouc and a Ph.D. in philosophy and history of natural sciences from the Faculty of Science at Charles University in Prague. His long-term research interests center around ancient Greek philosophy and cosmology, especially the Presocratics and the Ionian school of philosophy in particular. The intellectual perspective of the Archaic Greek Period continues to be a source of inspiration for his work. The books he published on this subject include Anaximandros z Mílétu (Pavel Mervart 2010), Anaximenés z Mílétu (Pavel Mervart 2014), and Apeiron: Anaximander on Generation and Destruction (Springer 2017, jointly with Dirk L. Couprie).
Further information about Radim Kočandrle’s research interests and projects is found here.
Mgr. Miloš Kratochvíl, Ph.D.
Miloš Kratochvíl received his PhD in philosophy at Palacký University in Olomouc. The major subjects of his academic interests are epistemology, especially the early development of the French tradition (from Comte to Bachelard), the history of ethics, and the Czech philosophy of the late 19th and the early 20th century. Aside from the articles written on these topics, he published books such as “Jean Piaget: uvedení do genetické epistemologie” (Jean Piaget: An Introduction to Genetic Epistemology), “Francouzská epistemologie: Přehled vývoje do poloviny 20. století” (French Epistemology: An Overview of its Development) a Pozitivismus v české filosofii první poloviny 20. století (Positivism in the Czech Philosophy in the First Half of the 20th Century).
Further information about Miloš Kratochvíl’s research interests and projects is found here.
Mgr. Zdeňka Míchalová, Ph.D.
Zdeňka Míchalová completed her studies of art history at Masaryk University in Brno in 2017, defending her dissertation on urban visual culture in early modern Moravia. Her research focuses firstly, on Art in the Protestant Reformation and guilds, and secondly on Burghers as patrons of the arts. She works at the National Heritage Institute and teaches art history and methodology at the University of West Bohemia.
Further information about Zdeňka Míchalová’s research interests and projects is found here.
doc. RNDr. Josef Moural, CSc.
Josef Moural studied mathematics and philosophy at Charles University in Prague and attended lectures on philosophy in a private apartment. He focuses on ancient and modern philosophy, phenomenology, analytic philosophy, ethics, and philosophy of science. Furthermore, he is interested in institutional theory (the ontology of cultures) and the philosophy of J. Searle, E. Tugendhat, K. Popper a T. Kuhn. He teaches in the Department of Politology and Philosophy at the J. E. Purkyne University in Ústí nad Labem and in the Department of Philosophy at the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen.
Further information about Josef Moural’s research interests and projects is found here.
PhDr. Jaromír Murgaš, CSc.
Jaromír Murgaš graduated from Philosophy and Physics at the Faculty of Philosophy and Faculty of Mathematics and Physics at Charles University in Prague. He started his career by studying the philosophical questions of natural sciences, which took place at the Institute of Philosophy of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences and culminated in a study stay at the London School of Economics in 1992. These studies brought him closer to philosophy itself and the teacher´s nature of J. Murgaš led him to teach philosophy. Since 1993, he has introduced to philosophy students of different studies, mostly humanistic studies, both at the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen and Charles University in Prague. He gained significant experience in gestalt therapy (1993-7, Multi-diens) and later systematic therapeutical work (2002-2015, The 7th C, R. Verlinden). Due to these experiences, he considers as his core activities teaching face-to-face above texts. He wrote the study guide Basic Skills in Interpretation of the Philosophical Texts I (2010) for skills of extraction of thoughts from texts. The practice for the real adoption of the thoughts is cultivated by him in the course The Philosophy and Gestalt Experience since 1998. He also teaches introductory courses in philosophy and, especially, ethics for the next medical professionals at the Faculty of Health Care Studies of UWB. He sees his role as a teacher of philosophy in promoting “people” and “thinking” in their connection.
Further information about Jaromír Murgaš’s research interests and projects is found here.
PhDr. Jitka Paitlová, Ph.D.
Jitka Paitlová works in the Department of Philosophy at the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen. Initially, she dealt with the epistemological problems of Plato’s philosophy, especially in the context of the protological interpretation of the Tübingen School. Later, she turned her interest to epistemology and the theory of the 20th-century science. In her dissertation, she analyzed the critical rationalism of the German philosopher Hans Albert, examining his specifics, transformations, and overlaps in comparison with the concept of Karel R. Popper. In the context of critical rationalism, she focuses particularly on the problems of rationalization of knowledge, conditions, and advancement of knowledge, scientific methods, value neutrality of science, and the relationship of knowledge and decision. She further focuses on the relationship of critical rationalism to Kant’s transcendentalism. Currently, she deals with the objectivity problem from the perspective of the experimental philosophy of science. She graduated yearly under the supervision of prof. Hanse Rott in the Department of Theoretical Philosophy (Lehrstuhl für theoretische Philosophie) at the University of Regensburg and undertook a six-month internship in the Department of Philosophy (Lehrstuhl für Philosophie) under the supervision of prof. Ursula Renz at the University of Klagenfurt. Her last six-month research internship abroad was at the Institut of Philosophy at the University of Leipzig.
Further information about Jitka Paitlova’s research interests and projects is found here.
Mgr. Petr Pavlas, Ph.D.
Petr Pavlas has completed his studies in Humanities (Bc.), Analytic Philosophy and Philosophy of Science (Mgr.), and Theory and History of Science and Technology (Ph.D.) at the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen, Faculty of Arts of the University of West Bohemia. In September 2015, he successfully defended his dissertation thesis called Trinus liber Dei: Comenius’s Place in the History of the Book Metaphor (supervisor: Daniel Špelda) and was admitted as a lecturer to the Department of Philosophy where he had already been working as a team member in a research project. At the same time, he was admitted as a postdoctoral researcher to the Department of Comenius Studies and Early Modern Intellectual History at the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague. Petr Pavlas does research on Comenius’s project of perfect language and writes a monograph Define and Combine. Jan Amos Comenius’s Last Language. He attended three long–term research visits in 2013–2014 (Berlin), 2017 (Berlin) and 2018 (Erfurt). He has published one monograph and an array of studies in Czech and English. He is going to concentrate on the relation of the Comenius circle (Ritschel, Bisterfeld, Rave) to Leibniz, potentially, to the mathematical and logical aspects of Jan Amos Comenius’s pansophism.
Further information about Petr Pavlas’s research interests and projects is found here.
Mgr. Michal Polák, Ph.D.
Michal Polák studied the Theory and Philosophy of Communication and the Theory and History of Science and Technology at the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen. In the dissertation, he dealt with the concept of intentionality in Daniel Dennett’s work. In his research, he has devoted himself to the philosophy of mind and cognitive science for a long time. He is currently focusing on the philosophical and methodological aspects of consciousness science. He subscribes to naturalism and the need to work with the knowledge of empirical sciences, especially cognitive psychology and neuroscience. He has published several papers in impact journals and three monographs. He is an assistant professor and researcher at the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen at the Department of Philosophy. He is also a member of the Research Center for the Theory and History of Science and the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness. He has completed internships at the Central European University in Budapest, and the University of Sussex in Brighton, and is currently on an internship at the Otto von Guericke Universität in Magdeburg.
Further information about Michal Polák’s research interests and projects is found here.
PhDr. Martin Profant, Ph.D.
He studied and gained his PhDr. on the Philosophy Faculty at Charles University (1985) and he studied post-gradually on the Ústav pro filosofii a sociologii ČSAV till 1989. He obtained his Ph.D. at the Faculty of Philosophy and Arts at the University of West Bohemia counselor consultant in Pilsen. Since 1992 he has been active in politics as a counsellor in the parliament and as the Chief-adviser of the Minister of Education from 2002 to 2006. During this time he modestly published and occasionally held external lectures at various universities (UJEP, UK, ZČU). After the year 2006, he has fully returned to the academic career as a research worker on Filosofického ústavu AV ČR (oddělení morální a politické filosofie). His work focuses on the history of philosophy of the first half of the 20th century (monographs about Cassirer and Marcuse), on education as a theme of political philosophy, and on a problem of the nation in the Central-European thematizing.
Further information about Martin Profant’s research interests and projects is found here.
Mgr. Radek Schuster, Ph.D.
Radek Schuster received his doctor degree in Theory and History of Science and Technology at the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen, Czech Republic in 2010. He defended, under the supervision of doc. RNDr. Jiří Fiala, CSc., his Ph.D. thesis with the title “Between Language and Logic” which deals with the work of a philosopher and mathematician Friedrich Waismann in the context of the 20th-century analytic philosophy and philosophy of science. As a student, he undertook the Erasmus Exchange Programme at the University of Durham (09/2001–01/2002) and the Free Movers research stay at the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford where he consulted Waismann’s Nachlass (09–11/2005). Recently he has worked as an assistant professor and the deputy head at the Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Arts, University of West Bohemia. In his academic career, he focuses on three fields: 1) analytic philosophy and philosophy of language, primarily the work of Wittgenstein, 2) philosophy and history of science, chiefly legacy of the Vienna Circle, 3) philosophy of technology, particularly philosophical aspects of AI and human-computer interaction. These three interests have been also realized in the form of international collaboration with and research stays at the following institutions: University of Bergen/The Wittgenstein Archives (Norway Grants, 09/2015 a 06/2016), Universität Wien/Institut Wiener Kreis (AKTION, 05/2011, 05/2016 a 04–09/2017) and Indiana University/School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering (Fulbright, 09/2016–02/2017). His hobbies include illusions and paradoxes of all kinds.
Further information about Radek Schuster’s research interests and projects is found here.
PhDr. ThLic. Drahomír Suchánek, Ph.D., Th.D.
Drahomír Suchánek received both of his degrees at Charles University in Prague: the first one in history in the Faculty of Arts and the second one in Catholic theology in the Catholic Theologic Faculty. He completed internships at the University of Bayreuth (2000/2001) and the University of Vienna. He was permitted to carry out research at the Vatican Secret Archives several times (2009, 2010, and 2011). He is an assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy of the Faculty of Arts at the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen and also at the Institute of World History of the Faculty of Arts at Charles University. He specializes in general medieval history, focusing on Church history and on the relations between secular and religious powers, particularly the papal elections, the medieval papacy, and the Ottonian-Salian Empire. He is the author or co-author of the following monographs: “Church History I: Antiquity and the Middle Ages”, “Church History II: Modern History”, “Ius Exclusivae: The Right of Exclusivity during Papal Elections”, “The History of Lichtenstein”, “Imperium et Sacerdotium: The Imperial Church at the Turn of the First and Second Millennia” and “An Inventory of the Estate of Adolf Procházka“.
Further information about Drahomír Suchánek’s research interests and projects is found here.
doc. PhDr. Miloš Ševčík, Ph.D.
Miloš Ševčík completed his studies of aesthetics and philosophy in the Faculty of Arts at Charles University in Prague in 1998. He also received his PhD in aesthetics from the same faculty in 2003. He has worked as an assistant professor in the Department of Aesthetics of the Faculty of Arts at Charles University since 1999; furthermore, he has simultaneously worked in the Department of Philosophy at the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen. He received a scholarship for an investigation from the Instituto Camões and carried out the scientific sojourn in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Coimbra in Portugal. In his research, he deals with the French and Czech aesthetics of the 20th century. He particularly inquires into the problems of the temporality of aesthetic event and its sensual nature. He published several dozens of studies in academic journals and edited volumes both in the Czech Republic and abroad. He authored and co-authored five scientific monographs published in Czech: “Arts as a Reference to the Reality of Time”, “Bergson’s Concept of Comic Imagination and Laughter”, “Aisthesis. The Problem of Aesthetic Event in E. Levinas, J.-F. Lyotard and G. Deleuze & F. Guattari“, “Art as an Expression of Meaning. Jan Patočka’s Philosophy of Art“ and “Patočka’s Interpretations of Literature”.
Further information about Miloš Ševčík’s research interests and projects is found here.
Mgr. Zdeňka Špiclová, Ph.D.
Zdeňka Špiclová studied Humanities and European Cultural Studies in the Faculty of Arts at the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen and Media Studies in the Faculty of Social Sciences and Protestant Theology in the Protestant Theological Faculty at Charles University. She focuses on the reflection of the use of new technologies in the humanities, specifically in the context of virtual art and also in the field of digital humanities. She does not only explore the methods which are formed within digital humanities and their theoretical reflection but she also examines their practical applicability in the research of early Christianity. She focuses primarily on the Jewish Christian groups of Jesus followers associated with the names of James, the brother of the Lord, and the apostle Thomas Juda Didymos. She undertook her internship in the Immersive 3D Visualization Lab at Politechnika Gdanska in 2016 and at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome in 2018. Furthermore, she participated in two international conferences at the University of Liberal Arts and Sciences in Warsaw in 2015 and at the University of Helsinki in 2018. She spent the semester of 2019 under the supervision of prof. Köpf at the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen.
Further information about Zdeňka Špiclova’s research interests and projects is found here.
PhDr. Lada Wagnerová, Ph.D.
Lada Hanzelínová graduated in International Trade at the University of Economics in Prague in 1994 and Theory and Philosophy of Communication at the Faculty of Arts of the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen in 2006. The dissertation on Otto Neurath and communication in artificial language was defended at FF UWB in 2015. In the years 1991-2009 she worked in the private sphere with a focus on business and personal training and coaching. The essence of her professional interest is how things or people appear. Practical realizations are the teaching of subjects focused on communication skills (Culture of Social Communication and Communication Practice). On a theoretical basis, the main subject of the research is a special part of visual communication – information graphics and, more recently, the theme of academic etiquette. Even in the university environment, she uses his economic knowledge in the positions of financial and project manager, in 2014-2017 he was chairwoman of the Budgetary Committee of the Academic Senate of UWB.
Further information about Lada Hanzelinova’s research interests and projects is found here.