REGULAR MEMBERS

MARTIN NITSCHE

Head of Department

Martin Nitsche serves as the Chair of the Department of Contemporary Continental Philosophy at the Institute of Philosophy of Czech Academy of sciences in Prague. His research focuses on phenomenology, phenomenological topology, philosophy of art, aesthetics, phenomenology of religious experience, and resilience theory. Nitsche formulated the “transitive-topological model of phenomenology” (Methodical Precedence of Intertwining. An Introduction to a Transitive - Topological Phenomenology, 2018). He also co-authored Phenomenological Investigations of Sonic Environments (Palgrave Macmillan 2024) and published Die Ortschaft des Seins. Martin Heideggers phänomenologische Topologie (2013). He was the guest editor of an Open Philosophy topical issue “Philosophy and Sonic Research - Thinking with Sounds and Rhythms” (2021).

Curriculum vitae here. 

ALICE KOUBOVÁ

Deputy Head of Department

Alice Koubová is a senior researcher, deputy head, leader of the Systems of Resilience working group in Systemic Risk Institute, and co-investigator of the HORIZON INSPIRE project. Her research focuses on resilience, political psychology, performance, ethics, and artistic research. She has been teaching at art schools in the Czech Republic and abroad for many years. From 2021 to 2024 she was Vice Dean for Science and Research at the Faculty of Theatre of the Academy of Performing Arts, and from 2021 to 2022 she was Ethical Mediator at the same institution. She is the author and editor of nine monographs, dozens of academic articles and a large number of contributions to cultural magazines, public media and newspapers (Deník N, Tvar, Host, Salón Práva, Heroine, Alarm). She regularly constributes to the discussions in public space, collaborates with artistic and cultural institutions and is the author of several theatre performances. She is also the recipient of the President of the Academy of Sciences Award for Popularisation, two awards for popularisation of philosophy at the Philosophical Institute CAS, the Otto Wichterle Prize, the Libellus Primus Award and the Josef Hlávka Award.

 Curriculum vitae here.

KAREL NOVOTNÝ

Karel Novotný (1964) has been a researcher at the Institute of Philosophy of the CAS since 1990. In 2016, he was awarded the degree of Doctor of Science (DSc.) by the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. He studied philosophy and physics at Charles University (graduation 1989) and philosophy and political science at the Katholische Universität Eichstätt in Germany (Magister Artium 1997), He completed his PhD studies at Université Paris XII and at the Institute of Philosophy and Religious Studies at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague (2003), habilitated in philosophy at the Faculty of Arts, Palacký University in Olomouc (2012), and was appointed Professor of Philosophy at Charles University in 2019.
Since 2009, he has been the Director of the Central European Institute for Philosophy at the Faculty of Philosophy of the Charles University and the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, together with Prof. Hans Rainer Sepp. His awards include the Award of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic for outstanding scientific achievement (1 October 2014) and the Order of the French Republic Knight of the Academic Palms for scientific merit and active contribution to university and scientific cooperation between France and the Czech Republic (31 March 2015). He has been a visiting scholar at 7 foreign universities and was a Fulbright Research Scholar at The New School for Social Research in the USA in 2022/26.
As part of his work at the Department of Contemporary Continental Philosophy at the Institute of Philosophy of the CAS in Prague, he has led 7 grant projects from 1993 to the present in which he has addressed central themes in philosophy, and in particular their thematization in both classical phenomenology in Germany and especially in new and contemporary French phenomenology. He is the author of two monographs (2012 and 2023) and 40 studies on the philosophy of Jan Patočka. In total, he has published 6 book monographs (3 of which abroad), (co-)edited 18 collective monographs (13 of which abroad), and published over 80 scholarly studies.

Curriculum vitae here. 

PETR KOUBA

Petr Kouba studied philosophy at the Departement of Philosophy and Religious Studies of the Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague, and received PhD at the same department in 2006. During his postgraduate study, he was awarded several fellowships: at the Universität Zurich (2000 - 2001), Duquesne University in Pittsburgh (2001 - 2002), and the Université de Lausanne (2003-2004). After receiving PhD, he lectured at the Anglo-American College in Prague and in the international programm CERGE-EI at the Charles University. Besides being a researcher at the Institute of Philosophy, he lectured philosophy at the Departement of Philosophy and Religious Studies of the Faculty of Arts, Charles Universtity in Prague between 2006 - 2016. He is an author of the books Fenomén duševní poruchy. Perspektivy Heideggerova myšlení v oblasti psychopatologie, which was translated to the English (2015) and German (2012) languages. He published another two monographies: Margins of Phenomenology, and Exodus bez Mojžíše. He also co-edited three collective monographies: Dynamic Structure: Language as Open System, Medicína v kontextu západního myšlení, and Franz Kafka: Minority Report.

Curriculum vitae here. 

JOSEF FULKA

Josef Fulka works as a researcher at the Institute of Philosophy, Academy of Sciences, Prague (Department of Contemporary Continental Philosophy) and as an associate professor at the Faculty of Humanities, Charles University. He has published books on the Enlightenment philosophy (Zmeškané setkání. Denis Diderot a myšlení 20. století, 2004), Michel Foucault (Michel Foucault: politika a estetika, 2005, co-authored with Pavel Barša), psychoanalysis (Psychoanalýza a francouzské myšlení, 2008), Roland Barthes (Roland Barthes: od ideologie k fantasmatu, 2010), gesture and sign language (Když ruce mluví. Gesto a znakový jazyk v dějinách západního myšlení, 2017; Deafness, Gesture and Sign Language in the 18th Century French Philosophy, 2020) and the interaction between 20th century music and philosophy (Kapitoly z filosofie nové hudby, 2023). In 2013 – 2014, he was a Fulbright fellow at the University of Texas at Austin (Dept. Of Communication Studies).  He translates from French and English (R. Barbaras, J. Kristeva, R. Barthes, G. Didi-Huberman, J. Butler, E. Balibar and others). 

Curriculum vitae here. 

MARTIN RITTER

Martin Ritter received his PhD in Philosophy from the Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague (2009). He is Deputy Director at the Institute of Philosophy and Senior Researcher at its Department of Contemporary Continental Philosophy. He is also affiliated with the Center for Environmental and Technology Ethics - Prague. Within the consortium project Beyond Security: The Role of Conflict in Resilience Building, he is the coordinator of the IP’s involvement and deputy leader of one of its research work packages (Conflict and Technology in the Anthropocene). From 2007 to 2020, he taught philosophy at Charles University, Prague. From 2020 to 2022, he was a visiting scholar in the research group Philosophy of Media at the University of Vienna. He published three monographs and numerous journal articles especially on phenomenology, critical theory, media philosophy, and philosophy of technology.

Curriculum vitae here.

MICHAEL HAUSER

Doc. Michael Hauser, Ph.D. (1972) studied philosophy at the Faculty of Arts of Charles University. Since 1998 he has been working at the Institute of Philosophy of the CAS and since 2003 he has been a lecturer at the Faculty of Education of Charles University.

Since 2020 he has been the chairman of the doctoral board of Philosophy of Education at the Faculty of Education of Charles University. The doctoral studies are run in cooperation with the Philosophical Institute of the CAS. In addition to his scientific and pedagogical work, he also carries out popularization activities.

He is interested in contemporary French philosophy, especially the work of Alain Badiou, Critical Theory with a focus on Theodor W. Adorno, political philosophy, cultural theory, radical theology and theoretical understanding of the contemporary historical period.

Curriculum vitae here.

JAN BIERHANZL

Jan Bierhanzl is a researcher at the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences and teaches philosophy at the Faculty of Humanities, Charles University. His main areas of expertise are the work of Emmanuel Levinas and contemporary political philosophy grounded in phenomenology and critical theory. His most recent book concerns the relationship between aesthetics, ontology and politics (Estetika ambiguity, Karolinum, 2022).

Curriculum vitae here.

HYNEK JANOUŠEK

(*1977) H. Janoušek studied philosophy at Faculty of Arts of the Charles University, namely at the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, and was awarded his Ph.D. in 2015 for the thesis on the originis of Husserl's phenomenology in the contexts of Franz Brentano School (Marty, Twardowski, Meinong, Kraus, Ehrenfels). His research also focuses on empiricist philosophy of David Hume and on rationalist philosophy of Bernard Bolzano. He is interested in bringing thoughts of these authors into the contemporary phenomenological and analytic discourses in order to reveal some of their basic premises and indicate possibilities of their future development. He also makes his research accessible to wider scientific audience in translations and commentaries.

Curriculum vitae here.

PETR PRÁŠEK

Dr. Petr Prášek is a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Contemporary Continental Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences. He received his Ph.D. in 2019 from Université Paris 1, Panthéon-Sorbonne and Charles University in Prague (supervisors: prof. R. Barbaras, prof. M. Petříček). His PhD. thesis, Le devenir-autre de l'existence. Essai sur la phénoménologie contemporaine, was awarded the Bolzano Prize by the Rector of Charles University in 2020. Its revised version was published in 2023 by Hermann in Paris.
His other publications include a monograph on the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and a number of articles on contemporary French phenomenology and eco-phenomenology. In his current projects, P. Prášek focuses on applied phenomenology. In addition to ecological issues, he also deals with fake news.

Curriculum vitae here. 

ROBIN ROLLINGER

 
IVAN GUTIERREZ

Ivan Gutierrez was born and raised in the USA, Colombia, and Mexico. He studies philosophy at the State University of New York at Binghamton, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and at the Faculty of Arts of the Charles University in Prague. He received PhD titel for the work on the relation of embodiment and the new medi. He become visiting member of the Deparment of Contemporary Continental Philosophy in January 2020 as a cooplicant of the GAČR grant "Phenomenological investigations of sonic environment." Besides, he teaches philosophy at the Anglo-American University in Prague and works as a translator.

Curriculum vitae here. 

PETR VAŠKOVIC

Petr Vaškovic studied philosophy at the Institute of Philosophy and Religious Studies at the Faculty of Arts of Charles University, where he defended his dissertation on Dostoevsky and Kierkegaard’s ethics. A revised version of his dissertation was published in 2024 by De Gruyter under the title Kierkegaard and Dostoevsky: The Search of the Authentic Life and the Problem of Existential Entrapment. Since 2023 he has been a researcher at the Department of Contemporary Continental Philosophy at the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic and an assistant professor at the Department of Philosophy at Palacký University in Olomouc. He is primarily interested in existential philosophy (Kierkegaard, Camus, Sartre, Dostoevsky), phenomenology (Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Lévinas) and ecophenomenology. His research focuses on topics such as emotions, corporeality or the relationship between humans and more-than-human nature. 

Curriculum vitae here.