Institute of History

Mag. Dr. Birgitta Bader-Zaar (summer semester 2016/2017)

Mag. Dr. Birgitta Bader-Zaar is an Austrian historian working as an Assistant Professor at the Department of History of the University of Vienna.

She is the author or co-author of dozens of studies dealing primarily with legal history in relation to the history of minorities and the history of women in Central Europe, to the history of North American slavery and to the history of citizenship and political thought associated with it.

 

 

Prof. Gene Terruso (winter semester 2017/2018)

Prof Gene Terruso (currently the College of Performing Arts, University of the Arts, Philadelphia) is an American educator, director, script editor, actor, producer, playwright (author of plays and musicals such as A Gentleman's Game or A Rock and Roll Fantasy) and also a journalist with rich experience with the American theatre, film and television scene, where he has been active for several decades. As an actor and director, he has worked in a number of theatres across the United States, including a number of theatres on Broadway, and he was the artistic director of the Provincetown Playhouse and also president of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in Los Angeles and New York.

Dr. Sc. Stipica Grgić (summer semester 2017/2018)

He is a graduate of history at the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Zagreb. He has been working at the Department of Croatian Studies at the University of Zagreb as a scientific and pedagogical worker since 2008. He is a member of several professional historical societies and associations.

He regularly appears at international conferences. He specializes in the history of the Balkan countries and Croatia, especially in the 20^th century.
In the summer semester 2017/2018, he teaches courses "European history 1945 till present" and "Southeastern Europe in the first half of the 20^th century" at the Philosophical Faculty of the UHK.

 

Dr. Dmitar Tasić (winter semester 2018/2019)

Dr. Dmitar Tasić is a researcher from Belgrade. His primary research interests relate to the history of the Yugoslav armed forces in the interwar period as well as after 1945. He is the author of more than 60 different publications (monographs, adapted collections of documents, articles, encyclopaedias) and he regularly presents himself at international conferences.

In 2014 he received a postgraduate scholarship from the Irish Research Council and in 2016 he was a researcher at the Centre for Advanced Studies in Sofia. In the years 2017 - 2018 he participated in the joint project War and Citizenship. Redrawing the borders of citizenship in World War I and its consequences at the Department of Humanities at Frederic II University, Naples, Italy.

Dr. Karin Moser (winter semester 2018/2019)

A historian and researcher who has been lecturing film and media history, the history of consumption and current history at the University of Vienna (since 2006) and at the University of Innsbruck (2017). A curator of several film series and exhibitions. A historical and dramatic consultant, scriptwriter and co-author of television documentaries.

She has published many publications and DVDs on Austrian/European 20^th century history, film and media history, propaganda film, national identity, East-West stereotypes / Cold War, film censorship, film policy, advertising and industrial films.

She holds the courses "Consumption in the 20th Century" and "Media, Propaganda, Politics" at the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Hradec Králové in winter semester 2018/2019.

 

Dr. Rutger Kramer (summer semester 2018/2019)

Dr Rutger Kramer is currently a postdoc researcher within the SFB Visions of Community: Comparative Approaches to Ethnicity, Region and Empire in Christianity, Islam and Buddhism (400-1600 CE) (Austrian Science Fund F42, www.viscom.ac).

As part of this project, he studies the founding of the authority of the Carolingian dynasty in Western Europe in the eighth and ninth centuries, which was the subject of his first monograph.

He has also worked and published in the area of comparative approaches to studies of the influence of the monastic culture on the development of the political discourse in Europe, Arabia and Tibet, and he is constantly interested in hagiographic narrative as well as in the influence of the "Middle Ages" on the modern world.

 

PD Mag. Dr. Oliver Kühschelm (winter semester 2019/2020)

Oliver Kühschelm teaches history at the Universities of Vienna and Salzburg. In July 2020 he will take up a new position at the Institute of Rural History (IRH) in St.Pölten, Lower Austria, leading a research group on the history of migration. He has focused on 19th and 20th century Central Europe, with particular emphasis on the history of the middle classes, nationalism, consumption and advertising.

He has also pursued an interest in theoretical and methodological issues and published about historical discourse analysis and visual culture. He sits on the editorial board of zeitgeschichte and the Österreichische Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaften/Austrian Journal of Historical Studies. He is lead editor of a societal history of Lower Austria in the long 19^th century (two volumes, to be published late 2020). A monograph on buy national campaigns in Austria and Switzerland, 1920–1980 (Zur Genealogie nationaler Ökonomien. Einkaufen als nationale Verpflichtung) will be published with the de Gruyter early 2021.

At the University of Hradec Králové he held courses on economic nationalism and the history of consumption.

 

Dr. Ekatěrina Klimenko (winter semester 2019/2020)

Dr. Klimenko received her Candidate of Sciences degree in Cultural Studies at the Saint Petersburg State University of Culture and Arts in 2010. For a number of years, she taughts at various state universities in Saint Petersburg. She published articles and book chapters both in Russian and in English. Her latest publications are "Building the Nation, Legitimizing the State: Russia—My History and Memory of the Russian Revolutions in Contemporary Russia" In Nationalities Papers and "Towards Forgetting: Russia' s Account of the Stalinist Repression before and after the Ukraine Crisis" In Euxeinos. Her research interests are ethnicity and nationalism, nation-building and national identity, history politics and political use of the past; my research focus is on contemporary Russia. her current research project, “Church, State and “Russia – My History”: Narrating National History, Legitimating Vladimir Putin’s Regime” was supported by the Polish National Science Centre. 

 

Dr. John Paul Newman (summer semester 2019/2020)

Dr John Paul Newman  is Associate Professor in Twentieth-century European History. He completed his PhD at the University of Southampton (supervised by Professor Mark Cornwall) and from 2008- 2011 he was an ERC Postdoctoral Research Fellow working on the project 'Paramilitary Violence after the Great War', to which he contributed a case study of violence in the Balkans. 

He is interested in the modern history of the Balkans and East-Central Europe, with a particular focus on Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia, I have published on veterans of the First World War, paramilitary violence, and the larger legacies left by war in the region. He has been working on a large research project looking at victorious societies and cultures of war victory in twentieth century Europe, a study of the Croatian General Josip Jelačić and the intersections of national and imperial identities in nineteenth-century Central Europe, and a book-length study of irregular warfare and paramilitary violence in the Balkans, provisionally titled ‘Freedom or Death: A History of Guerilla Warfare in the Balkans.

 

Dr. Spyros Tsoutsoumpis (summer semester 2021)

Dr. Spyros Tsoutsoumpis is an Associate Lecturer at Lancaster University. His primary interest lie in the history of paramilitarism, counter-insurgency and guerrilla warfare in the Balkans and Southern Europe.

Dr Tsoutsoumpis has held several fellowships and lectureships at the University of Manchester, Manchester Metropolitan University, the Centre for Advanced Studies in Sofia, New Europe College in Bucharest and the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation. He has published numerous journal articles and a monograph ‘A history of the Greek resistance during the Second World War: The people’s armies’ (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2019)

 He holds the courses ‘Century of the Irregular: Insurgencies and Civil Wars in the 20^th century’ and ‘Resistance and Collaboration in Hitler’s Europe’ in the summer semester of 2020/2021

 

Dr. Iakovos Menelaou (winter semester 2022)

Iakovos Menelaou is a lecturer and research supervisor at Metropolitan College Athens . He is a member of the Balkan History Association. In the past, he taught in secondary and further education in the UK. At the University of Hradec Králové, he teaches Modern History focusing on the Cyprus problem and the Rwanda crisis.

Dr Menelaou studied History and Literature (BA) at the University of Ioannina, Medieval Studies (MA) at Queen’s University of Belfast, Theology (MTh) at the University of Wales, Trinity Saint David and holds a PhD from King’s College London.

Dr Menelaou has broad academic interests and specialises in world history, world literature and education.

His monograph on the Cyprus problem has been published by Trivent Publishing, and a second book on the Greek poet Cavafy and the Medical Humanities will be published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Dr Menelaou is a published poet. 

 

Dr. Therese Garstenauer (summer semester 2021/2022)

Therese Garstenauer is Elise Richter Senior Research Fellow at the Department of Economic and Social History, University of Vienna. Her research interest lies in the history of work and livelihood, gender studies, and social studies of science. Her current research project is about the proper conduct of life of Austrian government employees in the interwar period. Recently, she has edited a volume of the Österreichische Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaften/Austrian Journal of Historical Studies titled  “Historicizing Bureaucratic Encounters. From September 2022 on, she will be president of the International Conference of Labour and Social History (ITH), an international network of historians concerned with the history of labour relations, labourers, and the labour movement.

 At the University of Hradec Králové she has taught courses on gender and the division of labour throughout the last four centuries and on civil service from the perspective of global history.

 

Dr. Rebecca Shriver (winter semester 2022/2023)

Dr. Becca Shriver is teaching two courses during her time at UHK: an introductory historical survey of European cultural developments since 1500 and “Heart of Europe: Culture and Identity in Bohemia,” which is a seminar that includes students from UHK and her home institution, Missouri Southern State University. 

Dr. Shriver is an Assistant Professor of Modern European History at MSSU. Her research focuses on transnational social movements, geopolitical identities, and international organizations. She has published several recent articles on women’s involvement in interwar European federalist organizations, which is also the focus of her current manuscript. While in the Czech Republic she is working on a new project that investigates peace organizations’ responses to minority conflicts in Eastern Europe during the 1930s.

 

Dr. Bruce Berglund (winter semester 2023/2024)

Dr. Bruce Berglund is an American historian of Russia, Central Europe, and world sport. His articles on world sports have appeared in the Washington Post and CNN Opinion, and he has been interviewed for media sites, television, and radio in the US, Canada, Europe, and Australia. He is currently writing a book on sports and politics in the Soviet Union and Russia, from the Stalin period to today.

Until 2018, Dr. Berglund was Professor of History at Calvin University in Michigan. Prior to that, he taught in the Russian & East European Studies program at the University of Kansas. A three-time Fulbright scholar, Dr. Berglund has visited the Czech Republic several times in the past for research work. He is author of Castle and Cathedral in Modern Prague (CEU Press, 2017), a study of religion, culture, and politics in the First Czechoslovak Republic. His most recent book is The Fastest Game in the World (University of California Press, 2021), a global history of ice hockey. Dr. Berglund has also published twenty books for children on history, sports, and other subjects.

 

Priv.-Doz. Dr. Philipp Strobl (summer semester 2023/2024)

Priv.-Doz. Dr. Philipp Strobl is an Austrian historian focused on the history of Migration and the History of Knowledge. Befor joining the University of Vienna, he has worked at different universities in Austria, Germany, Australia, the United States, and Slovakia. His latest book “A History of Displaced Knowledge” (Brill), analyses how refugees from National Socialism have transferred, adapted and applied their cultural capital in a refugee context in Australia. In his current project at the University of Vienna, he researches the agency of refugees in postwar Austria as crucial players in the process of negotiation a legal equalization.

He is the founder and editor of the academic student journal “Historia Prima” at the University of Hildesheim as well as of the podcast Transit at the University of Vienna. His seminars in Hradec Králové are focused on a modern history of migration in Central Eastern Europe (MA seminar), as well as on the history of communication and networks during the past 150 years in Europe (Bachelor seminar).

 

Priv.-Doz. Dr. Tamara Scheer (winter semester 2024/2025)

Priv.-Doz. Dr. Scheer is an adjunct professor at the University of Vienna, Institute for Eastern European History. She acquired her venia docendi in 2020 with a thesis about Language and Loyalty in the Habsburg Army, 1867-1918. Since completing her doctoral thesis in 2007 about the state of emergency during First World War, she has been working at several institutions in Austria and abroad, among them her early post doc project about the Austro-Hungarian presence in Sanjak Novi Pazar, 1879-1908 at Andrássy University in Budapest, and with a Dobrovský Fellowship at the Masaryk Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague.

Currently, she is also heading a research project entitled Turning a forgotten Burial Place of 450 Austro-Hungarian Soldiers from First World War in Rome into a 21st Century Memorial at the Pontifical Institute Santa Maria dell'Anima in Rome: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WJZv_SFwAc&t=12s

 

Dr. Alex Rodriguez Suarez (summer semester 2024/2025) 

Dr Alex Rodriguez Suarez is a historian based in Barcelona. He received his PhD in Byzantine history from King’s College London. Since then he has undertaken research in Turkey (ANAMED; AKMED), Bulgaria (CAS Sofia), Italy (Vittore Branca Center; Real Academia de España en Roma), Greece (American School of Classical Studies in Athens), Lebanon (Orient-Institute Beirut), Israel and Palestine (W.F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research). He has also been a summer fellow at Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection. Most of his research projects have dealt with the religious soundscape of the Christian communities of Southeast Europe and the Levant, particularly the use of church bells. The findings of his extensive fieldwork are accessible in an online database (www.bellsbase.com). His interests also include cultural exchange and iconography. At the Institute of History, University of Hradec Králové, he taught “History of the Crusades” and “History of a metropolis: From Byzantium to Istanbul.”

 

Dr. Ümit Kurt (winter semester 2025/2026)

Ümit Kurt is a historian of the modern Middle East. His research focuses on intercommunal violence, forced displacement and economic dispossession in the interior regions between the East Mediterranean and the Greater Syria in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He has a particular interest in how legal categories of population, property, and economy are shaped by the everyday experiences of social life. He is also committed to bringing both the Middle East and Ottoman Empire into discussions of global history, especially narratives about capitalism, class formation, property regimes, gender, and modern state formation.

He completed his dissertation in the Department of History at Clark University in 2016. He held several postdoctoral positions at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University, and the Polonsky Academy in the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute and worked as a Visiting Assistant Professor in Armenian Studies Program at California State University (CSU) Fresno. He served as a Vice Executive Secretary for the International Network of Genocide Scholars from 2020 to 2023. Currently, he is an Assistant Professor in the School of Humanities, Creative Ind. and Social Sciences (History) and an affiliate with the Center for Study of Violence in the University of Newcastle, Australia.

His recent book, The Armenians of Aintab: The Economics of Genocide in an Ottoman Province (Harvard University Press, 2021) has been the recipient of the Dr Sona Aronian Book Prize for Excellence in Armenian Studies, Honorable Mention Book Prize by Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association (OTSA), and PROSE Award Finalist in the World History category, the Association of American Publishers in 2022. He is also the co-author of The Spirit of the Laws: The Plunder of Wealth in the Armenian Genocide (Berghahn, 2017), co-editor of Paramilitary Violence in the Post-Ottoman Borderlands: Pro-state Militias and Nation-Building, 1905-1949 (Bloomsbury, 2025), Mass Violence in the Post-Ottoman Lands: Causes, Processes and Consequences (Lexington Books, The Rowman & Littlefield, 2025), Microhistories in Armenian Studies (CA: The Press California State University Fresno, 2024), The State of the Art of the Early Turkish Republic (CA: The Press California State University Fresno, 2023), The Committee of Union and Progress: Founders, Ideology, and Structure (CA: The Press California State University Fresno, 2021), and Armenians and Kurds in the Late Ottoman Empire (CA: The Press California State University Fresno, 2020).

His articles have appeared in various journals, including International Journal for the Study of Modern Islam, Middle Eastern Studies, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Nation and Nationalism, History Compass, Patterns of Prejudice, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, and Journal of Genocide Research. Kurt is the winner of Discovery Early Career Researcher Award and Australian Research Council Fellow for 2022 and selected Royal Historical Society Fellow in 2023 and Associate Researcher at IFEA in 2025. He has been appointed as the Dumanian Visiting Professor in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago in 2024. He is also the recipient of the Barbro Klein Fellowship (2024), Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study and Junior Core Fellowship, Institute for Advanced Study (2025), Central European University, Budapest. He is the winner of the 2023 College of Human and Social Futures Excellence Award for Global Engagement, University of Newcastle. His forthcoming book, "Biographies of Violence: The Perpetrators of the Armenian Genocide" will be published by Cornell University Press in 2026. He is currently working on the role of madrasa students in political opposition in the 19th century Ottoman Empire.