WORKSHOP | Understanding the Public Space: Innovative methods and concepts for Interdisciplinary research
Two days international workshop organised by the Institute of Contemporary History within the Urbanity project. Together with local and international colleagues, we will discuss new problems, concepts and methodological approaches to researching the public space. At the interdisciplinary meeting we will focus on, for example, historicising and comparative perspectives, questions of participation, engaged ethnography, digital data or artistic research. The workshop will also include an artistic screening of short films by the world-renowned Polish artist Joanna Rajkowska in the presence of the artist. Programme Thursday, 4/9/2025****
9:30–10:00 Welcome Words & Programme Introduction Andrea Průchová Hrůzová & Hubert Guzik (Institute of Contemporary History, Czech Academy of Sciences)
10:00–10:50 Mikhail Ilchenko (Leipzig) Reshaping the Image, Losing Urban Space: Neoliberal Urban Policy in the Socialist City
11:00–11:50 Henrieta Moravčíková (Prague) Hybrid Research on Urban Structure: (Un)planned Bratislava
12:00–14:00 Lunch break
14:00–14:50 Jason Luger (Newcastle) Digital World-Building and Urban Public Space: Imaginaries, (Fast) Infrastructures, and Politics
15:00–15:30 Coffee break
15:30–16:20 Viktória Mravčáková (Košice) Interrupted Utopia: Searching for Infrastructures of Care
16:30–17:20 Lynda Zein (Prague) Navigating, Adjusting and Reframing within Continual Cycles of Destruction and Construction
17:30–19:30 Break
19:30–21:00 Embodied Spaces, Memories, and Power Screening and talk with Joanna Rajkowska (Warsaw–London) Presentation of three short films: A Walk (2007), Performance V (2023), and Dybbuks and Martyrs (2025) Friday, 5/9/2025****
9:30–10:00 Morning coffee
10:00–10:50 Vojtěch Dvořák (Brno) Urban Margins through the Lens of Media Participation
11:00–11:50 Vladimír Turner (Prague) Community Service
excerpts from his new film Community Service (2025)
12:00–14:00 Lunch break
14:00–14:50 Jana Tsoneva (Sofia) "In the Name of the Law": Ethnic Cleansing and Enclosures as Lawfare
15:00–15:50 Michaela Pixová (Prague) Urban Agriculture as a Path to a Resilient and Cohesive Society
16:00–16:15 Closing remarks
Full programme available at urbanita.cz
