prof. Dr. phil. Rudolf Kučera, Ph.D.

Professor of modern history at the Faculty of Social Sciences at Charles University in Prague. I am also a Director of the Masaryk Institute and Archives of the Czech Academy of Sciences and a Permanent Visiting Professor at the University of Konstanz. I chair the Scientific Advisory Board of the Czech Science Foundation. As an editorial board member, I co-edit the book series Studien zur Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte Ostmitteleuropas (Harrasowitz Verlag).

In the past, I was a visiting professor at the University of Vienna, a Fellow at the Imre Kertész Kolleg in Jena, and a Junior Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Freiburg. I was also a member of the Scholary Board of CEFRES (French Research Centre for Humanities and Social Sciences - Prague).

My training as a historian was acquired in Prague, Berlin, and Vienna. The focus of my research is on the modern history of war, violence, labor, and protest, as well as the social and cultural history of Central Europe from the 19th to the 20th centuries

Monographs

Chapters in monographs

• Kučera R. (2023). Žít a přežít: život za frontovými liniemi. Dějiny města Zlína 2: moderní město (pp. 32-41).
• Kučera R. (2019). Nástup mas. České země v letech 1880-1920. Dějiny Česka (pp. 190-215).
• Böhler J., Konrád O., & Kučera R. (2021). Introduction. In the Shadow of the Great War : Physical Violence in East-Central Europe, 1917-1923 (pp. 1-10).

Articles

• Kučera R. (2022). At the End of the End of History: Czech Historiography and the Ukrainian-Russian War. Zeitschrift für Ostmitteleuropa-Forschung, 71(4), 651-657.
• Kučera R. (2016). Wobec dogmatizmu : Zachodni Marksizm, the Making of The English Working Class i komunysticzne historiografie w NRD, Czechoslowacji i Polsce 1948-1990. Stan Rzeczy. Teoria Spoleczna. Europa Srodkowo-Wschodnia, 2016(10), 144-166.
• Kučera R. (2015). Making Standards Work : Semantics of Economic Reform in Czechoslovakia, 1985-1992. Zeithistorische Forschungen/Studies in Contemporary History, 12(3), 427-447.
• Kučera R. (2016). Facing Marxist Orthodoxy: Western Marxism, The Making, and the Communist Historiographies of Czechoslovakia and Poland, 1948-1990. International Review of Social History, 61(1), 35-50. UT-WOS link

Contributions in the conference proceedings

Head of the Czech part of the research team: World War I Veterans in Austria and Czechoslovakia 1918-1938, Bilateral Austrian-Czech Research Project, Austrian Science Fund - Czech Research Foundation, 2017–2019.
Principal investigator: Violence in Central Europe During and in the Aftermath of the World War I. Austrian and Czech Lands in Comparison, Czech Science Foundation, 2014–2016.
Team member: Jenseits des Schützengrabens. Kriegserfahrungen der österreichisch-ungarischen Soldaten an der Ostfront des Ersten Weltkrieges, Ludwig Boltzmann Institut für Kriegsfolgen-Forschung, FWF – der Österreichische Wissenschaftsfonds, 2012–2013.
Principal investigator: Work, Nation, Gender. Bohemian Labour 1914–1918, Czech Science Foundation, 2010–2012.

German speaking area and the rest of Central and East Central Europe

Modern History of Central Europe, First World War, Comparative and Transnational History