Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA.CZ) “fellowship” projects contribute to developing the international character and quality of the research environment in the Czech Republic, including the professional growth of individual scholars. Thanks to this program, philosopher and architectural theorist Jana Ndiaye Beránková, Ph.D. will begin her work in the Czech Republic in July. Conversely, Martin Pjecha, M.A., Ph.D., a Comenius scholar, will depart from the Institute of Philosophy for a research stay in Vienna....
Mgr. Jana Ndiaye Beránková, Ph.D. is an architectural theorist, philosopher, writer, and publisher. In 2024–2025, she was a fellow at the Institute for Ideas and Imagination in Paris, affiliated with Columbia University. She defended her doctoral dissertation, “Productive Misunderstanding? Architectural Theory and French Philosophy from 1965 to 1990,” in 2023 at Columbia University in New York (GSAPP). Prior to that, she studied at the École Normale Supérieure, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, the Free University of Berlin, and Masaryk University in Brno.
She runs the nonprofit publishing house Suture Press, which focuses on carefully designed books on continental philosophy, contemporary art, and architectural theory. She is the editor of several collections, including Revolutions for the Future: May ’68 and the Prague Spring (with Nick Nesbitt and Michael Hauser, 2020), and Thinking the Infinite (with Jelica Šumič Riha and David Rabouin, 2021). In 2025, she published a book-length interview with Alain Badiou titled L’Éclat de l’absolu, which explores the intersections between Badiou’s philosophical system and the thought of Plato, Hegel, Sartre, Althusser, Lacan, and Deleuze.
At the Institute of Philosophy, her project ArchConcepts will explore the relationship between architectural theory and continental philosophy (especially structuralism, semiotics, post-structuralism, and logical positivism) between 1960 and 1980. She will focus on a critical analysis of architectural writings by authors such as Aldo Rossi, Giorgio Grassi, Manfredo Tafuri, George Baird and Charles Jencks, Alan Colquhoun, Diana Agrest and Mario Gandelsonas, Françoise Choay, Hubert Damisch, Bernard Tschumi, and Peter Eisenman.
The project will run until 2027 and is coordinated by Assoc. Prof. Martin Nitsche, Ph.D.
Martin Pjecha, M.A., Ph.D. is a historian. He studied at Central European University (Budapest, Hungary – Vienna, Austria). In 2022, he defended his dissertation, “Theo-politics of the Hussite Movement: from Reform to Revolution,” earning his Ph.D. in Comparative History. Previously, he worked at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University, and until 2024 at the Center for Medieval Studies (Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences) within the Czech Science Foundation project “From Performativity to Institutionalization: Conflict Resolution in the Late Middle Ages (Strategies, Actors, Communication).” He currently works in the Department for Comeniology and Intellectual History of the Early Modern Period.
His research focuses on the international religious-political thought of dissent in the premodern West, particularly how this thought intersects with the historical conditions of Central Europe. He published his first book on the revolutionary ideas of the Hussite movement in 15th-century Bohemia, emphasizing the role of much older discourses (Christian Platonism, apocalypticism) in their new vision of society and religiosity. He is currently shifting his focus toward the early modern period.
In Vienna, he will work on the project Politics in the Holistic Thought of John Amos Comenius, focusing on Comenius’s underexplored political philosophy. This research perspective contrasts with the dominant image of Comenius as a religious reformer and educator. Drawing on neglected sources and interdisciplinary methods, the project aims to highlight the political relevance of Comenius’s philosophy, theology, and scientific endeavors.
The project will run until 2027 and is coordinated by PhDr. Vladimír Urbánek, Ph.D.
MSCA.CZ mobility projects are supported by the Jan Amos Comenius Operational Programme under the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports and are co-financed by the European Union.
