Joining us in Edmonton as of 1 September 2013, we are pleased to announce the Croatian, Czech, Hungarian, and Polish Wirth Institute Research Fellows for the Academic Year 2013-14:
Olga Cielemęcka
I am a doctoral candidate at the Institute of Philosophy, Warsaw University, Poland. I studied philosophy, Spanish philology, and gender studies. My main fields of scientific interest are: contemporary continental philosophy, posthumanism, and feminist critique. I am currently working on my PhD dissertation entitled "Between Human and Non-human. Giorgio Agamben's Ethics and Its Anthropological Foundations." The primary objective of my research is to examine a philosophical proposition of a "new, non-human ethics" which emerges after the so-called "antihumanist turn" in philosophy. In this antihumanist vein the human subject is reallocated into the field of the "non-human"; its close proximity to the animal, machine, matter, the microorganic, etc., is thus recognized and conceptualized. My aim is to investigate how this anti-anthropocentric twist challenges the humanist tradition, at the same time allowing new normative-and possibly also political-projects to be articulated.
Henriett Dinók
After graduating from Law School, following a short legal practice, I joined the Institute for Legal Studies of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences Centre for Social Sciences in Budapest, as Junior Research Fellow. My doctoral project focuses on bias-motivated crimes, a particularly problematic area in Central-European post-communist states. I have also been active in working with human rights NGOs, and community organizations for Central-East Europe's largest and most deprived minority, the Roma.
Iva Drozdek
My name is Iva Drozdek and I'm 31. I was born in Osijek, Croatia, but spent my childhood in Germany and Belgium since the Homeland War raged in former Yugoslavia. I have a degree in English and German language and literature. I'm a Ph.D. Student of Literature and Cultural Identity, and am very interested in everything that has to do with influencing and forming people/attitude/nations. Furthermore I really enjoy intermedial research such as movie adaptations of novels and of course the academically unrecognized texts in songlyrics. Currently I'm working on my thesis Song lyrics of the 20th century in which I will analyse and categorize the most popular songlyrics of the past century in English, German and Croatian. My goal is to present the academic audience with the importance and cultural influence of song lyrics, as well as their change in topics throughout the century. What I am mostly looking forward to during my fellowship in Edmonton is not only having the opportunity to fully engage in my research but also to have people surrounding me who enjoy analysing texts/people. That is always very inspiring. The possibilities at the University of Alberta are (for the lack of a better word) mindblowing and there are so many lectures I would like to attend or at least to get a glimpse of. Since I've experienced life as a refugee I fully understand the need to have contact with one's origins, although one lives happily in another country. Being part of the With Institute gives me the opportunity to help people here connect with their Croatian ancestry.
Stanislav Štěpáník
Stanislav Štěpáník is a PhD student at the Czech Language Department at the Faculty of Education at Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic. In his research he focuses on Czech language teaching and learning and innovations in this area with a special focus on implementing features of constructivism. He is also interested in concepts of mother tongue teaching abroad. He graduated from the Faculty of Education at Charles University in Prague with a degree in teaching Czech and English in lower- and higher-secondary schools. He has worked as a teacher and university tutor.