Institute of the Ethnology SAS provides the PhD. seminars for the 1st and 2nd year of the PhD. programme. PhD. students also have to attend courses at the Philosophical faculty of the Comenius University in Bratislava or the Faculty of Arts at the Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra.
Topics of PhD theses for the academic year 2022/2023
The following topics of PhD theses are opened in cooperation with the Department of Ethnology and Museology of the Faculty of Arts for the academic year 2022/2023
- https://fphil.uniba.sk/studium/pk/doktorandske-studium/prijimacie-konanie/
- Applications are open from 1 to 31 May 2022
1) Stylistic contexts of furniture in the rural environment 1850 - 1950
Supervisor: PhDr. Juraj Zajonc, CSc.
Program: World Cultures and Religions
Form of study: Full-time
The development of furniture in rural environments was – like other spheres of production and consumption of material artefacts – closely linked to the styles of furniture culture and housing. The purpose of studying this relationship is to identify the influences of the stylistic furniture culture and their manifestations in the rural environment in terms of construction, morphology, and decoration. A comparative analysis of stylistic and rural furniture sets with the same function is the basic starting point of this study. Tracing the specific manifestations of stylistic influences in the historical and socio-economic conditions of the selected localities should be the next stage of the study of the issue. The research should seek answers to questions about the durability of furniture forms with stylistic influences in rural interior furnishings.
2) Socio-cultural aspects of living in suburbs
Supervisor: Mgr. Ľubica Voľanská, PhD.
Consultant: Mgr. Soňa Gyárfáš Lutherová, PhD.
Program: World Cultures and Religions
Form of study: Full-time
The new suburbs emerging in the vicinity of the large cities are characterized by the specific social structure of inhabitants. The "newcomers" meet the "old settlers "- and they have different needs, motivations, and ideas about everyday life and their living environment. These often originate in their different socio-economic statuses and age structure. The notional dichotomy between the urban and rural disrupts, and a new dynamically transforming suburban area is developing. The project aims to research the suburban environment by focusing on a specific socio-cultural phenomenon (in private and/or public space) or a particular social group (young families, seniors, children...) We invite you to use in-depth qualitative research methods (biographic interviews, participant observation) and to include visual-anthropological research methods (photography, video, comix).
3) The process of "eventisation" in the festive culture in Slovakia
Supervisor: PhDr. Katarína Popelková, CSc.
Program: World Cultures and Religions
Form of study: Full-time
In the late modernity period, an increasing number of areas of our social contacts are penetrated by some type of a cultural offer of experiences. The entire festive culture is affected by the dynamic process of changes. In this process, the common forms of holidays, feasts, social occasions, and cultural events are enriched with new elements of entertainment and with an offer of consumption. Along with this, specific forms of gathering, occasions, and new artistic formations called events are on the rise. Events as strategically conceived social gatherings produced for a certain purpose and aimed at providing an unusual experience, action, and collective entertainment, attract large amounts of people. These changes of global nature, which can be called the process of 'eventisation,' are covered by ethnology also in the framework of the study of the current forms and contents of holidays and festivities in Slovakia. The doctoral theses should be devoted to map the expressions of the process of eventisation on the example of a selected festival and to learn about it using qualitative ethnological research methods.
4) Between the undemocratic regime and the present. The year 1989 in the biographical and cultural memory of Slovak society (Ethnological view).
Supervisor: PhDr. Monika Vrzgulová, CSc.
Program: World Cultures and Religions
Form of study: Full-time
The work should examine the images in which the selected social groups of Slovak society reflect the causes, course, and consequences of November 1989. The main concepts are biographical (individual), respectively the social memory and cultural memory. Individual, resp. social memory is a living layer of memories whose bearers represent a generation of experiences - those who have survived a given historical period. On the one side, cultural memory consists of knowledge and facts about the past stored as written and visual documents in archives, artifacts in museums, books in libraries, or documentaries or works of art (films, photographs, works of art). On the other, collected images, symbols, and facts are selected and publicly disseminated through memorial activities, ceremonies, and rituals on Memorial Day in memorable, often authentic places associated with a given historical period or event. The result of the work should be to affect the relationship between these categories of memory and their mutual influence. The essential research method should be the oral history method, supplemented by other sources.
5) Social and cultural aspects of ethnic health inequalities: the case of health status of Roma in Slovakia
Supervisor: Mgr. Andrej Belák, PhD.
Program: World Cultures and Religions
Form of study: Full-time
The project aims at the social and cultural determinants of the rather poor health status of Roma in Slovakia. Drawing on previous findings, it will focus especially on aspects researched, thus far, the least, namely the causes and effects of various both direct and indirect forms of anti-Roma racism, of related both local and central policies as well as of the local standards practices within related epidemiological research. The results of the project are expected to deliver new cues not only regarding contemporary related debates in socio-cultural (medical) anthropology but also knowledge readily applicable within public health.
6) Cultural and social aspects of family business and family companies in the context of the local community and regional development.
Supervisor: Prof. Zuzana Beňušková, PhDr., CSc.
Program: World Cultures and Religions
Form of study: Full-time
As a specific phenomenon, family business and family companies are receiving attention from an economic and legal point of view. The basis of such companies is the intertwining of work and private life, which has an impact on family relationships. The ethnology of this topic paid attention to the agricultural and craft environment of the pre-industrial period. The research will focus on the example of case studies, the functioning of the family and the company, the strategy of sustainability the company as well as its position in the local community and in the current political-economic system.
7) Constitution of a cultural region (with an emphasis on elements of traditional folk culture as part of the cultural heritage)
Supervisor: Prof. Zuzana Beňušková, PhDr., CSc.
Program: World Cultures and Religions
Form of study: Full-time
The regionalization of Slovakia from the ethnological aspect is constructed on the basis of the administrative division of Slovakia until 1922 in combination with cultural and historical elements based on traditional folk culture as part of the cultural heritage. At present, new systems of identifying, maintaining and highlighting cultural specificities, institutionally managed from different levels, are involved in the creation of a cultural region. The question of the re-interpretation of the cultural regions of Slovakia and their definition arises. The aim of the work is to analyze these systems and their effects on the identity of the region in the selected cultural region, to verify the validity of the perception of the region's borders, its representations and the longevity of cultural elements associated with the region.
8) Post-modern forms of Marian devotion in Central, Eastern, and South-Eastern Europe
Supervisor: Mgr. Tatiana Zachar Podolinská, PhD.
Program: World Cultures and Religions
Form of study: Full-time
Research of the dynamic of the manifestations and forms of Marian devotion in the post-IIWW period up to the present in the context of turbulent political transformations (communism, post-communism, post-transformation period) and the change of socio-cultural constellations in terms of different trajectories of modernization processes in Western Europe and socialist resp. post-socialist region's countries. The project can focus on any particular manifestation of this dynamic: material culture, Marian legends, religious tourism, places of pilgrimages, qualitative research of the miracle narratives, popular religion, folk faith, the economics of sacrum, etc. or it can further develop our knowledge on broader and more general patterns of discursive development of Marian devotion throughout the region in the respective period in a comparative perspective.
9) Digital scientific collections in ethnology and anthropology: their creation, usability in research and sustainability
Supervisor: Juraj Zajonc, PhDr., CSc.
Consultant: Mgr. Andrej Gogora, PhD.
Program: World Cultures and Religions
Form of study: Full-time
The submitted topic of doctoral study requires from the applicant an interdisciplinary (ethnology and anthropology - archiving - digital humanities) and theoretical-applied approach (interpretation and heuristics - creation of practical outputs and methodologies). It focuses on current approaches and trends in the design and construction of digital scientific collections in the humanities, especially in ethnology and anthropology. Emphasis is placed on the problem of metadata structures of scientific collections, the applicability of scientific collections in the practice of humanities research and their further perspective use (scientific and non-scientific). The study also includes professional activities at the Department of Scientific Collections of IESA SAS, including the practical preparation and creation of specific sets of digital scientific collections.
10) Mechanisms and contexts of transmission of social conservatism
Supervisor: Mgr. Tatiana Zachar Podolinská, PhD.
Consultant: Mgr. Vladimír Bahna, PhD.
Program: World Cultures and Religions
Form of study: Full-time
The subject of this research theme is social conservatism, understood broadly as any socio-cultural value system that promotes strict adherence to social norms and emphasizes social exclusivity. Individuals who embrace such values are committed to social conventions and traditions that are seen as a means of promoting group cohesion and are characterized by group conformity and collectivism. The proposed research topic approaches this issue in the context of cognitive and evolutionary anthropology. It is focused on the social and psychological mechanisms and contexts of transmission of values and beliefs which fall under the umbrella of social conservatism (and related concepts of traditionalism, religious fundamentalism, ethnocentrism, etc.) and takes into account a comparison of cases of stable persistence (eventually new adoption) and, conversely, the abandonment of socially conservative values and beliefs.
11) Cultural heritage in practice
Školiteľ: Mgr. Daniel Luther, CSc.
Konzultantka: prof. PhDr. Alexandra Bitušíková CSc.
Program: World Cultures and Religions
Form of study: Full-time
The aim of the doctoral study will be research and analysis of contemporary approaches of selected localities/communities to local cultural heritage. The topic may be connected to either urban environment (preferably small towns) or rural localities. The key approach (in addition to theoretical knowledge advancement in critical heritage studies) will be fieldwork in selected localities that represent a simple scale of societal evaluation and use of local cultural heritage: 1. localities that do not recognize their heritage or are unable to identify it, and therefore cannot see it as an opportunity of their development; 2. localities that can identify their heritage, but do not know how to use it; and 3. localities that are able to define their heritage and profit from it, or use it as a tourist attraction, which might be connected with a number of challenges. The research should cover all these categories.
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