Paul Blokker, PhD, principal investigator in the project, is associate professor, Department of Sociology, Institute of Sociological Studies, Charles University and Jean Monnet Chair. He is a political sociologist with strong interdisciplinary interests, and has been working in EU Studies and related issues since 1998, specializing in European integration at the University of Amsterdam and the European University Institute, Florence. His research has been funded inter alia through a Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowship, held in the UK. He has widely published (including two monographs with Routledge). He is an International Editorial Board Member of the European Journal of Social Theory and co-editor of the new journal Social Imaginaries. He is also a member of the board of the research network European Political Sociology (RN32) of the European Sociological Association.
Ondřej Císař, PhD, senior scholar in the project, is Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University and is also affiliated to the Institute of Sociology of the Czech Academy of Sciences. He is editor-in-chief of the Czech edition of Czech Sociological Review. His research focus is on political mobilisation, social movements and political sociology. He is author or co-author of four books and numerous papers. Recent publications include: ‘Polanyi, Political Economic Opportunity Structure and Protest: Capitalism and Contention in the Post-communist Czech Republic’ (with J. Navrátil, Social Movement Studies, 2017); ‘Social Movements in Political Science’ (Oxford Handbook of Social Movements, 2015); ‘The Emergence of a European Social Movement Research Field’ (with M. Diani, Routledge Handbook of European Sociology, 2014); ‘Transnational Activism of Social Movement Organizations: The Effect of European Union Funding on Local Groups in the Czech Republic’ (with K. Vráblíková, European Union Politics, 2013).
Yuliya Moskvina, is a Ph.D. researcher, in her 2nd year of study in the Sociology Programme at Charles University in Prague, Faculty of Social Sciences. Her main research interest include civil society, social movements, urban social movements, political violence, the commons, interaction between formal and informal politics, and pragmatic sociology (Boltanski and Thévenot). Her BA thesis (Masaryk University, Brno) dealt with “The development of the discourse of civil solidarity. Postmodern era and the civil solidarity”. She has ample experience with qualitative research and methods, including interviewing. Prior, she has studied at Masaryk University, Brno, and the University of Jan Amos Komensky, Prague.
Petra A. Beránková is a Ph.D. researcher, currently in her 3rd year of study in the Sociology Programme at Charles University, Faculty of Social Sciences. Her main research interests are political culture, participation, and social movements, especially from the point of view of cultural sociology. She received two Master’s degrees: 1) Sociology (Dynamics of Contemporary Societies) with a thesis on watchdog NGOs (“Guardians of public interests”), awarded by Josef Lux Prize 2013; 2) Public and Social Policy (thesis on construction of participatory spaces in the case of urban planning). She spent an Erasmus semester at University of Vienna. She has participated in a research on Czech political culture (funded by Charles University Grant Agency, project No. 1624414 A-SP). Her forthcoming dissertation examines symbolic boundaries between formal politics and political activism in the Czech Republic. Ms. Beránková is a teaching assistant, and leads seminars on history of sociology and she is a tutor of an international workshop Prague-Konstanz Study Days.
Kristián Šrám, is a Ph.D. researcher, Department of Sociology, Institute of Sociological Studies, Charles University. He holds a MA in sociology at Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University and a MA in business administration at Faculty of Business Administration, University of Economics in Prague. His work has mostly revolved around qualitative research in sociology and consumer behavior. His dissertation research (Engaging the Neoliberal: Actors’ Perspective on Project Capitalism) is dedicated to the question of how do the actors perceive, experience neoliberal changes and how do these changes influence actors` relation to the social world they occupy. Currently, he is further developing academic skills in both research and teaching. He holds a position of teaching assistant at NYU in Prague and he externally participates on an ongoing GAČR project where his main role lays in qualitative data analysis and subsequent academic publishing (as a co-author).
*****
paulusblokker.wordpress.com 