Mgr. et Mgr. Radan Haluzík, Ph.D.

Studied biology and ecology at Charles University in Prague and social sciences at University College London and Stanford University. He has lectured at the Faculties of Humanities and Social Sciences at Charles University, the Prague Academy of Film Studies, New York University in Prague and the CERGE/UPCES programme. As a social anthropologist he specializes in research on the social life of things, architecture and the inner peripheries of cities, nationalism, and other burning questions of our time. He is also interested in the general question of the relationship between politics and aesthetics, how notions and experience of beauty influence human motivations, goals and action. His long-term field work on war conflicts in the former Yugoslavia and the Caucasus provided the basis for his book "Why did the Lads Go off to War: Emotion and aesthetics at the beginning of ethnic conflicts". In the Centre for Theoretical Studies he leads a team concerned with vague terrains, the internal peripheries and nature of our cities, which has now published its results in the extensive collective monograph "The City Inside Out". Another of his long-term projects is concerned with the dramatic changes in residential architecture, the landscape and village life in many until recently marginal areas of Eastern Europe and the countries of the global South.