Pavel Zahrádka has studied philosophy and aesthetics at Charles University in Prague and sociology at Palacký University in Olomouc. In 2010 and 2011 he taught philosophy as a visiting professor at the University of Münster. Currently, he is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the Philosophical Faculty of Palacký University Olomouc. His main areas of focus are philosophy of art and theory of consumption. Recently he published the book Vysoké versus populární umění [High versus Low Art] (2009). He is also an editor of the Estetika na přelomu milénia [Aesthetics at the Turn of the Millenium] (2011).
Renáta Sedláková
Renáta Sedláková graduated in sociology from Masaryk University in Brno. She works as lecturer at the Department of Journalism at the Philosophical Faculty of Palacký University Olomouc. She is mainly interested in the effects of media on the society of late modernity and in practices associated with the use and consumption of popular culture. Her broader field of interest covers the media representation of reality especially in the case of minorities (e.g. older people) and audience analysis.
Martin Fafejta graduated in sociology and culturology from the Palacký University Olomouc. He is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Sociology and Adult Education, Palacký University Olomouc. He published a book Úvod do sociologie pohlaví a sexuality [Introduction to the Sociology of Sex and Sexuality]. He is concerned with the topics of gender and sexual identities, social construction of minorities and the ideology of new social movements (e.g. environmental).
Libora Oates-Indruchová
Libora Oates-Indruchová studied literary and cultural theory and obtained her PhD in English from Lancaster University, U.K. She completed „habilitation“ (dr. habil.) in Literary and Cultural Studies at Szeged University, Hungary. She is Associate Professor at the Department of Sociology at Palacký University and Senior Researcher at the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for European History and Public Spheres in Vienna. Her research interests include censorship, narrative research and cultural representations of gender. Her articles on late state-socialist Czech cultural issues appeared, among others, in Signs, Europe-Asia Studies, Men & Masculinities and Sociologický časopis. She is the author of Discourses of Gender in Pre- and Post-1989 Czech Republic and editor of two anthologies of translations from feminist and gender theory. She is currently writing a book on academic censorship in state-socialist Czech Republic.
Jan Kalenda graduated in sociology and andragogy at Palacký University Olomouc where he is now Ph.D. student in sociology. He is also lecturer at the departments of Sociology and andragogy, Psychology, and Development studies at FF UP. His dominant research areas are historical sociology, especially problematic of long-term social change and state formation, and development of consumer culture. He published several articles in Czech and Slovak social science journals.
Jana Mahelová
Jana Mahelová studied czech philology, journalism and cultural studies at the Philosophical Faculty of Palacký University Olomouc. She is mainly interested in consumer culture and social aspects of language and she graduated with the thesis „Image of the 17th November 1989 in Daily Newspapers“. Nowadays she´s been working as proofreader and editor of fiction and also non-fiction literature.
Tomáš Karger studied sociology and andragogy at Palacký University Olomouc, where he is currently a doctoral student in sociology. He also has a technical background in his education and from there stems his long-lasting interest in Cybernetics, General Systems Theory and Theory of Complex Systems and their application in social sciences, particularly in sociology of culture and sociology of technology. His dissertation project concerns the use of the concepts of self-organization and emergence as models of social reproduction and change.
Ondřej Molin
Ondřej Molin gruduated in art history from Palacký University Olomouc. There he also studied sociology and andragogy and got broad interest in mental mapping and its use in studying teenagers perception of shopping malls. As the Ph.D. student of art history his main area of research is, apart from visual culture of 20th century, art of totalitarian regimes and its misuse at propaganda.
Filip Tvrdý
Filip Tvrdý studied Philosophy and Sociology at Philosophical Faculty at Palacký University in Olomouc, Czech Republic. He has been a fellow at the Department of Philosophy since 2005 and he teaches history of modern and analytical philosophy, theory of argumentation and philosophy of biology. Currently, his main scholarly interest is exploring how knowledge from cognitive and social psychology can be applied in solving traditional philosophical problems. This year he is going to publish a monograph called Turing Test: Philosophical Aspects of Artificial Intelligence.