Prof Hana Cervinkova

Anthropology, Centre for European and Eurasian Studies

Professor of Anthropology

Rowan House
1.17
(01) 708 6651
Biography

Biography

Professor Hana Cervinkova (B.A., Temple University, Philadelphia, M.A., Ph.D., Anthropology, New School for Social Research in New York, 2004) is a political and educational anthropologist with a geographic focus on East and Central Europe. In her early publications, she built on her ethnographic research in the Czech military focusing on the cultural and political paradoxes of post-socialist transformation in the liminal period of intensive post-Cold War civil-military restructuring.  Her recent work highlights issues of nationalism, racism and memory as they emerge in the everyday educational and political discourses and practices in Poland and the Czech Republic. She is also involved in collaborative research analysing changes in higher education in Central Europe and Ireland. The politics of memory and history figure prominently in her urban-based research, much of which she has dedicated to exploring and making public the silenced heritage of the formerly multicultural societies of Central Europe. Cervinkova also published on anthropology of post-socialism and post-colonialism and participatory and action research methodologies

Cervinkova's research work is interwoven with her pedagogical practice. She designs her classes to foster critical thinking and active learning through the nurturing of anthropological imagination, which encourages seeing people and issues in cross-cultural dimensions. She developed and led a number of international grants and initiatives, including a Horizon 2020-funded European doctoral training scheme (EDiTE – European Doctorate in Teacher Education, 2016-2020). She is a recipient of several teaching awards, including the 2016 Award for Excellence in Education Abroad Curriculum Design and the Maynooth University Teaching Award 2022-23. 


Prior to moving to Maynooth, Cervinkova worked in Central Europe holding a number of leadership positions in academia and in the public sector. She was the Rector of the University of Lower Silesia (Wroclaw, Poland) and a member of the Czech Academy of Sciences (Prague, Czech Republic).  At the European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA), she served as an elected member of the Executive Committee (2013 – 2016) and the Association’s Vice-President (2015-2016). In the public sphere, as the President of Centennial Hall in Wroclaw, a UNESCO World Heritage site, she developed and implemented major preservation projects, which included the acquisition and management of significant public investment funds to help save one of Europe's most important early-Modernist architectural complexes of the 20th century.

Research Publications Professional Teaching