Prof. Luďa Klusáková, Head of the Seminar of General and Comparative History

Luďa Klusáková (1950) is full Professor of History (2009) from the Palacký University at Olomouc. Since 2000, she has been chairing the Seminar of General and Comparative History at the Faculty of Arts at Charles University in Prague. She took her scientific degree from the same university in 1981 for her comparative research on the modernization of European urban networks. Her publications include The Road to Constantinople: The Sixteenth-Century Ottoman Towns Through Christian Eyes (2002; and 2004 in Czech), as well as many articles on problems of urban innovations, modernity and backwardness. She was leading for five years the Thematic Work Group 5 Frontiers and Identities within CLIOHRES Network, coordinating the research projects of the Seminar of General and comparative history. She is President of the European Association for Urban History (for the period 2010 – 2012). Her current interest is in the role of history in the creation of regional and urban identities. She was Erasmus coordinator 1999 – 2007, lecturing in English and in French since the beginning of Erasmus exchanges.

E-mail: kluslaff@ff.cuni.cz

Markéta Křížová (1974) is Associate Professor at the Centre for Ibero-American Studies at the Charles University in Prague. She received her MA in History and Anthropology, PhD and habilitation in Ibero-American studies at the same university. She held a doctoral fellowship at Universidad Autónoma de México. Her doctoral dissertation, La ciudad ideal en el desierto: Proyectos misionales de la Compaňía de Jesús y la Iglesia Morava en la América colonial [Ideal city in the wilderness: missionary projects of the Society of Jesus and Moravian Church in colonial America], was published in Prague in 2004; her habilitation is The strength and sinews of this western world...: African slavery, American colonies and the effort for reform of European society in the Early Modern Era, Prague 2008. Her research focuses on European overseas expansion, colonial history of America and cultural encounters and competitions. She is regularly offering course for international students in English.