Adrián Pla Ángel is a part-time assistant lecturer in the Department of English Studies at the Jaume I University of Castellón de la Plana (Spain). He is a PhD student in the Applied Linguistics, Literature and Translation programme at the Universitat Jaume I where he obtained the BA in English Studies and the MA in Secondary Education, Baccalaureate, and languages teaching. He is currently doing his international research stay in the department of English and American studies of the Masaryk University at Brno (Czech Republic). His research interests focus on corpus linguistics, discourse analysis on textual and digital genres in the field of health sciences through the use of digital and technological resources as well as multimodality.

Pavel Čanecký — I'm a PhD student in the programme English Linguistics and I specialize in phonetics and phonology under the supervision of Dr. Kateřina Tomková. I’ve been teaching the English language at the Technical University of Liberec since 2019. As an English teacher, I’ve always paid close attention to my students’ careful pronunciation. In the classroom, I believe in a practical approach supported by the use of modern technology. In my PhD project, I’m aiming to explore the exciting territory of Second Language Acquisition in relation to pronunciation and its possible applications in classroom practice. An integrally related objective of the project is to explore the applicability and usefulness of Computer Assisted Language Learning as a tool for helping learners improve both their perception and production of a second language. I guess the reason why I find my research appealing is because it is truly interdisciplinary and attempts to bridge the gap between theory and practice.

Sarah Dobiášová — My postgraduate research in the area of English Linguistics is focused on metaphorical idioms in different varieties of English and the role of context in the production, comprehension and usage of such idioms. In general, I am interested in cognitive linguistics, lexicology and phraseology. Additionally, one of my newest research interests is concerned with Functional Discourse Grammar. Apart from my MA degree in English Language and Literature, I have also been awarded a BA Diploma in Teaching German as a Foreign Language at the Faculty of Education at Masaryk University in Brno. My hobbies include reading, swimming, cycling and hiking.

Nela Hachlerová is a Ph.D. student in the program Literatures in English, working under the supervision of Tomáš Kačer. She has earned her MA degree in Teacher Training in English Language and Literature at the Faculty of Education, Masaryk University and afterwards spent some time as a teacher of English in Prague. Her current doctoral research focuses on Sam Shepard and his early experimental works. Among her research interests are avant-garde and off-off Broadway theatre. In her free time, Nela enjoys reading, especially postmodern literature, travelling and taking photos.

Barbora Kotucz (Zuskinová) is a full-time PhD student carrying out literary research under the supervision of Professor Milada Franková. She received her BA and MA degree at Masaryk University, combining studies of Philosophy with English Philology at the Bachelor level, which were followed by single-subject studies of English with the focus on Literature during her Master’s studies at the Faculty of Arts. Her fascination in literature is mainly caused by endless contrast in both content and form of a literary work underlining ambiguities of everyday life, which can be perfectly seen in magical realism. Her dissertation thesis covers British magical realism, focusing primarily on the work of Angela Carter.

Kristína Melišová holds an MA degree in English Language and Literature from Masaryk University. In her Ph.D. research under the supervision of Associate Professor Michael Kaylor, she focuses on patronage and its role in connection to modernism. This is a continuation of her previous research on the Bloomsbury Group and the broader modernist milieu. This particular topic not only represents a confluence of literature, visual arts, aesthetics and biography, all of great interest to her, but also shines a light on the circumstances under which the works that influence our lives so thoroughly come into being.

Abigail Mokra — A fellow doctoral student of the Literatures in English program, Abbie originally hails from Abilene, Texas in the United States. A self-described deadpan, woodland, bookish whiskey-zealot, she spends most of her free time with her nose in a book, Lagavulin-in-hand, watching the seasons pass in her cottage by the Brno Reservoir. Abbie's areas of research interest include American modernist and postmodernist fiction and poetry; Russian romanticism, realism, and post-Soviet émigré and samizdat literature; and Czech(oslovak) romanticism, biedermeier, and samizdat literature. Her current dissertation project focuses on the works of J. D. Salinger, Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Pynchon, Ken Kesey, Kurt Vonnegut, Sylvia Plath, Stephen Chbosky, and Jeffrey Eugenides, among others, and psychoanalytic literary criticism. In addition to literature, Abbie also has an MA background in International Relations and EU studies.

Lenka Pospíšilová holds an MA degree in English Language and Literature. Currently a Ph.D. student in the program Literatures in English. Her research focuses on the American literature, predominantly on the 19th century and authors representing particular regions of the United States of America. Moreover, her point of interest is also history of these regions, which forms an indispensable part of her research. Outside university, Lenka works in a museum, learns Dutch, listens to podcasts and translates novels.

Malikeh Rasti, is a Ph.D. student from Iran currently pursuing her studies at Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic. With a great passion for literature, her research primarily revolves around Folk Literature and Comparative Literature. However, her interest extends beyond these fields, and she is captivated by Cultural Studies, Gender Studies, Psychoanalytical Studies, Ethnomusicology, Anthropology, and Children’s Literature. Her master thesis is entitled, “A Comparative Study of English, Persian, and Turkish Azari Folk Lullabies Based on Francois Jost’s Thematic Theory”; and her Ph.D. dissertation is an eclectic study of English and Persian folk lullabies. Being inspired by an album called Lullabies from Axis of Evil by Erik Hillestad, she believes that not only can lullabies bridge between the infants and their parents, themselves, and nature, but also, they can connect human beings to each other and highlight their oneness and unity.

Daniela Šmardová received her bachelor’s degree in Social Anthropology and English Language and Literature from Masaryk University. She continued her studies at the Faculty of Arts and earned her master’s degree in English Language and Literature. During her studies she spent a semester at Hendrix College in the United States. She is currently a full-time doctoral student working under the supervision of Professor Milada Franková. Her dissertation project explores the literary work of Jeanette Winterson and analyses ways in which it disrupts the traditional perception of the world. Outside of academia, she works as a preschool teacher and a teacher of English in a language school.

Tereza Šmilauerová’s thesis concerns the versions of cultural cosmopolitanism in recent novels by Chinese American women, especially in the context of transnational/transpacific studies and postcolonial inter-imperialism, however, her academic interests also include mass media communication, public image creation and maintenance in American culture, and (evangelical) Christianity in the US. She has a BA degree from English language and literature and from Mediterranean studies here, and a MA degree from Methodology of English language and literature, also from here. In 2020 she was awarded the Fulbright stipend (but didn't go due to covid 🙁 ). In her "free" time, she (still) loves reading, cooking (anything from Japan, Korea, Vietnam…), hanging out with friends (preferably in a café), or mentoring/counselling/teaching uni students (which she also does for living).

Monika Večeřová — I earned my BA in International Territorial Studies at the Faculty of Regional Development and International Studies of Mendel University, and completed my MA degree in North-American Culture Studies at the Faculty of Arts of Masaryk University. In the meantime, I spent one semester at Häme University of Applied Sciences in Finland studying International Business, and one semester at Keele University in the UK under the American studies programme. My dissertation project focuses on African American women protagonists in crime/hard-boiled fiction combined with trickster folk tales. Outside academia, I aim to be less lousy in playing ukulele and to learn Swedish, enjoy writing, beta reading, being in nature, or traveling (seeing Nicholas Hytner’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream was the highlight of my 2019), and am also interested in environmental issues and intersectional feminism.

Karolína Zlámalová (she/her) is a student in the PhD program Literatures in English. Her PhD research concentrates on queer, gender, and femme aspects in contemporary North American immigrant life writing. Her research specifically looks at the ways in which the authors textually construct and address masculinities and femininities as parts of their autobiographical identities. She is also interested in narratives of queer childhood and parenthood, and the role of language in narratives by nonbinary autobiographers. In more general terms, she is curious about how differently marginalized authors represent and narrate their lives and identities and how these representations and narratives are influenced not only by authors’ cultural and language backgrounds but also by the affordances of their selected medium, market pressures, and imagined readerships.

Lenka Žárská has earned her BA and MA degrees at Masaryk University in English Language and Literature with both her theses focusing on contemporary British authors. Next to an English degree, she also holds BA in Dutch Language and Literature, where her main interest lay in sociolinguistics and dialectology. In an effort to connect the two studies, she now works on a dissertation examining the image of the Netherlands in the contemporary British novel, building on theories of stereotyping, nationality, and literary genre. Outside of academia, she is interested in translation and music.

Vladislav Belev – I have graduated in English philology from the Faculty of Arts at University of Pardubice. Currently, I am a Ph.D student of English linguistics at Masaryk University with the focus of my research being power in discourse, satire and multimodality. I am especially interested in telecinematic and computer-game discourse. Apart from discourse analysis, my research interests are pragmatics and sociolinguistics.

Sid Campé earned a double BA from the University of Northern Colorado in American History and French Language and Culture, then completed an MA in English Research at the Université de Haute-Alsace. He is currently pursuing a cotutelle between Masaryk University and Université de Haute-Alsace, under the supervision of prof. Mgr. Jan Chovanec (MU) and Prof. Samuel Ludwig (UHA). His PhD research focuses on the cultural transfer of hate speech from a joint sociolinguistics/cultural studies perspective, with a focus on social media, computer-mediated discourse, and translation. Other adjacent research interests include digital folklore, memetics, and forum communities.

Yurii Chybras received BA at Kyiv National Linguistic University in translatology and completed MA at Masaryk University in English Language and Literature majoring in linguistics. His Ph.D. research under Mgr. Miroslav Ježek, Ph.D. deals with phonetics, phonology, and sociolinguistics of English as a foreign language. Other adjacent fields of interest are loan word adaptation, and the role of phonology and sociolinguistics in language contacts as well as language interference.

Alena Gašparovičová has earned her MA degrees in English Language and Literature and Upper Secondary Teacher Training in English Language and Literature from the Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University. She is currently pursuing her doctorate in the programme Literatures in English. The focus of her research is the portrayal of female characters in literary works, especially in fairy tales. Outside of the department, she works as a freelance English teacher.

Jana Hallová is a PhD student in the English Linguistics program under the supervision of Prof. Jan Chovanec. Her current research concerns communication in contemporary media with specific focus on multimodality, social media, creativity and computer-mediated discourse. Her linguistic focus includes the disciplines of sociolinguistics and pragmatics. Research interests include forensic linguistics, discourse analysis and critical discourse analysis. She has earned an MA degree in the English Language and Literature program at DEAS as well as an additional BA degree in International Trade Law at the Faculty of Law MU.

Mariia Kokh holds an MA degree in English and German Language and Literature and is currently a PhD student in the programme Literatures in English. Working under the supervision of doc. Mgr. Janka Kaščáková, PhD., Mariia aims to explore the realm of the subjective focusing on the concept of memory in the poetry of Thomas Hardy and W.D. Snodgrass. Her areas of research interest include late 19th- and 20th-century English poetry, 20th- and 21st-century American poetry as well as memory and nostalgia studies. Outside of academia, Mariia teaches languages, experiments with writing and photography and is generally most often seen untangling her headphone cords.

Anna Mikyšková is a PhD student in the programme Literatures in English and her research focuses on popular theatre genres of the Restoration and early 18th-century period. She is also a member of a team of scholars who work on the project English Theatre Culture 1660-1737 whose aim is to publish the first anthology of Restoration drama in the Czech language. In 2019 Anna also gained a BA degree in the programme “Teaching German as a Foerign Language” at the Faculty of Education, MU. In her free time she leads the departmental students’ choir The Gypsywood Singers.

Zdeňka Neumanová — I am a part-time doctoral student in Experimental and Applied Linguistics. My main research interests are error analysis and learner corpus research and in my dissertation I deal with grammatical errors in the speech of Czech university learners of English. My research interests include (but are not limited to) corpus linguistics, learner corpus research, error analysis, grammar, syntax, self-repair, EFL, SLA, etc.

Krittaya Ngampradit is currently a lecturer teaching English as a foreign language and for academic purposes at Kasetsart University, Bangkok, Thailand. She has published several articles in national and international journals. Her research efforts have focused on applying corpus linguistics to the study of language variations, with particular attention to the roles of Metadiscourse in academic discourse. Her doctoral dissertation and most recent research center on language variation across cultures, disciplines, and study degrees, with particular reference to markers of determinacy ‘metadiscoursal boosters’. In that area, her work has recently been confirmed for publication in the book titled Variation in Time and Space: Observing the World through Corpora (2020-2021) by De Gruyter.

David Ryška graduated with a Master’s degree in English language teaching for secondary schools in 2020 and decided to stay a bit longer at the department, jumping straight into the new PhD programme of Applied and Experimental Linguistics. Besides DEAS, David also holds a part-time lecturer position at the English department of the Faculty of Education at the University of Hradec Králové where he teaches various courses in linguistics and ELT methodology and caters for the General English exam for students at the faculty. David’s dissertation project focuses on the area of L2 oral proficiency testing; employing the method of multimodal conversation analysis, he explores the nature of interaction between the candidates and the implications it might have for the design of test tasks and the formulation of assessment criteria.

David Špetla is studying in the translation section under the supervision of Dr. Kamenická, and his domain of research is Cognitive Translation Studies. David’s dissertation project focuses on explaining under- and overrepresentation of linguistic items in translations from English into Czech in comparison to texts originally produced in Czech. This is done on the basis of the Gravitational Pull Model by professor Sandra L. Halverson. Apart from this, David is also interested in various areas of research in Cognitive Linguistics and in what it can tell us about translation. In his free time, he likes to read contemplative books while filling his insides with tea and listening to hairy dudes tormenting cats on their fiddles.

Tereza Šplíchalová is a PhD student in English-Czech Translation Studies, studying under the supervision of professor Bohumil Fořt. Her research revolves around the interdisciplinarity of translation studies, be it in relation to narratology, applied linguistics or logic, and currently focuses on the interface between translation studies and fictional world theories. Tereza earned her BA and MA degrees at Masaryk University, ensuring that her soft spot for post-apocalyptic fiction accompanied her along the way. When she is not preoccupied with various ends of the world, she is freelancing in software localisation and audio-visual translation, or engaging her interest in art and technology.

Jana Valová — I am a full-time doctoral student of the programme Literatures in English and my supervisor is Professor Milada Franková. My research focuses on the topic of ostracized characters in neo-Victorian literature, the motivation and significance behind contemporary revisitation of the 19th century, as well as the issue of defining this constantly expanding and developing genre. Besides my studies, I also teach English at a language school, occasionally translate texts and help with projects related to teaching. In my free time, I like going mushroom foraging, playing with my dog or watching interesting documentaries.

Veronika Vargová holds a bachelor’s degree in Applied English Language Studies with a Minor in Japanese from University of Southampton and a master’s degree in English Language and Literature from Masaryk University. Her primary areas of interest are contemporary popular literature (especially romance), literary representation of neurodiversity and mental health, disability studies, literary trauma theory and history of madness. Her doctoral dissertation focuses on the representation of autism in contemporary American romance novels. Outside of academia, she has several years of experience with marketing and administration in an international corporate law firm.

Iveta Žákovská — I am a full-term student of the doctoral degree programme English Linguistics at the DEAS. The areas of my academic interest are mainly conversation analysis, discourse analysis, critical discourse analysis, multimodality and language of media. In my dissertation project, I focus on “conversationalization” of TV news under the supervision of doc. Chovanec. Besides trying to pursue my research activities, I teach at a language school and occasionally translate into Czech. My moments of leisure are usually devoted to baking, reading and pastel drawing.​

Velid Beganović is a Ph.D. student in the programme Literatures in English, studying under Associate Professor Michael Kaylor. He holds a BA degree in English Language and Literature from the University of Tuzla (Bosnia and Herzegovina), and an MA degree in Gender Studies from the Central European University in Budapest. His scholarly interests include modernist literature, gender and cultural studies, as well as social and literary theory. Both of his previous thesis projects have been either about or closely related to Virginia Woolf, as well as the literary life of London and Paris between the two World Wars. His doctoral research, too, follows this trajectory, though in a far more interdisciplinary fashion.
Outside academia, he writes (and publishes, incredible as it may seem) poetry and prose under the pseudonym V. B. Borjen. In 2012, he won the Mak Dizdar award with his first poetry collection. His work has appeared in several literary magazines in Bosnia, Serbia, Montenegro and the US. He writes in Bosnian and English.

Petra Fišerová’s dissertation project started out as literary analysis from the perspective of masculinity studies, only to be overtaken by a study of gender methodology in literary studies. Her specializations are feminist theory, masculinity studies, and dubbing translation (from her Mgr. program), and she hopes to add role-playing game theory as well as film and tv analysis. She’s a pragmatic person, except for that one time when she planned to finish her PhD in the allotted 4 years. She enjoys reading, writing, teaching university classes, and DMing roleplaying games.

Adéla Hájková is a student of a Ph.D. study program Literatures in English. She holds two MA degrees. The first MA degree was earned from the Faculty of Education, Masaryk University in 2013 and she also graduated in Teacher Training in English Language and Literature from the Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University in 2015. Both of her diploma theses were concerned with strong female literary characters and their different strategies of coping with patriarchal oppression. As a Ph.D. student, she is focusing on female transformations in A.S. Byatt’s short stories under the supervision of Professor Milada Franková.

Talal Victor Hawshar is a researcher pursuing an international dual Ph.D. (cotutelle) at Masarykova Univerzita and the Université de Lorraine. His main research centers on literary journalism, post-War American literature, and contemporary narratology. He is currently writing his Ph.D. dissertation on authenticity as a mode of resistance against alienation in the works of Jack Kerouac, Joan Didion, and Hunter S. Thompson. He writes blog posts for the Arabic channel al-Mayadeen, and teaches English at the Department of Applied Foreign Languages at the Université de Lorraine in Nancy, France. He is an experienced drummer and dedicates his free time to music, hiking, and fiction writing.

Jiří Lukl studies English linguistics, particularly in the field of functional syntax and information structure, though his interests extend to semantics and cognitive linguistics as well. He earned both BA and MA degrees at Masaryk University in English Language and Literature and History. Jiří has been instructed mainly in the Brno tradition of functional syntax based on Jan Firbas’s concept of FSP, but he also focuses on theories and concepts of information structure of American, British and other linguists. His general goal is to search for common ground between the various theories. In addition to his research, Jiří co-teaches the courses of Historical Development of English and Introduction to Functional Syntax at the department, and is currently employed as a lecturer of English at the Theatre Faculty of JAMU. He is assistant to his supervisor, Associate Professor Jana Chamonikolasová.

Ivana Plevíková is a PhD candidate at the Department of English and American Studies whose current doctoral research studies the construction of dystopian worlds in Margaret Atwood’s speculative fiction as well as focuses on a theoretical investigation of the ways in which dystopian stories transcend the boundaries of the literary and actively engage in the process of defamiliarization of the known and normalized in spheres such as politics, social criticism, and environmentalism. Her past research activities contained within both bachelor’s and master’s theses focused on the investigation of Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita and various processes of its adaptation and appropriation within non-literary fields, such as film, music, advertisement, and fashion. In writing these theses, she was interested in ways the adapted and appropriated works influence the contemporary perception of Lolita, whether the whole literary work or the sole mythical being of a girl, and consequently form a new cultural image of Nabokov’s novel. Besides her interest in literature, Ivana is a passionate photographer and an avid tea drinker.

Alexandra Koudelová Stachurová is a PhD student in Literatures in English. Her doctoral research investigates the use of metatheatrical devices as tools of political satire in the works of Thomas Middleton. She holds an MA in English language and literature and Classical archaeology. She enjoys travelling, sightseeing, walking trips, reading, and tasting new cuisines.

Maria Šimková — I got my Master's degree in Linguistics and Methodology of Teaching Foreign Languages and Cultures at the Faculty of the Humanities of Moscow State Linguistic University. I am currently pursuing a PhD degree in English Linguistics at the Department of English and American Studies, Masaryk University. My research interests include gender studies and discourse analysis with a special focus on masculine identities and new media discourse. My doctoral dissertation deals with the discursive means of construing microcelebrities' masculinities in the context of YouTube vlogs.

Tereza Walsbergerová has a bachelor’s degree in Theory of Interactive Media and master’s degree in English Language and Literature. She writes her dissertation project on comedic takes on paranoia in postmodern American fiction, which means that she can talk anything from Cold War to Covid. In 2018, she was awarded the William J. Hlavinka Fellowship at Texas A&M University where she spent one year studying and working as a graduate assistant at their Department of English. Aside from her primary field, she is also interested in queer studies and fan studies. In her free time, she reads YA novels and writes quirky poetry.

Jan Čapek — In his past, present, and future research, Jan focuses on the horror genre in fiction and film. He is especially interested in the horror genre as an expression of the anxieties of the human subject in the ever-increasingly complex and opaque reality of capitalism. Having taught and co-taught courses on sci-fi film, horror film, the work of H.P. Lovecraft, and literary and cultural theory, he is currently working toward finishing his dissertation on vampires through an intense theoretical engagement with French post-structuralist thought of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari.

Denisa Krásná defended her interdisciplinary dissertation titled “Decolonial Animal Ethic, Indigenous Veganism, and Ecofeminism in North American Culture and Literature” in 2023. She offers courses that intersect Decolonization, Animal, Indigenous and Canadian studies. Her primary research interests span artivism, decolonial resistance, Critical Animal Studies, and vegan studies. Denisa’s work delves into the connections between gendered colonial violence, the exploitation of nonhuman animals, and the representation of nonhuman animals in contemporary Indigenous and ethnic literatures. Additionally, she explores the politics of consumption and decolonial outdoor narratives. Denisa’s co-edited collection Flow: Outdoor Counternarratives by Women from Rivers, Rock, and Sky is set to be published by the Canadian publisher Rocky Mountain Books. Beyond her scholarly pursuits, she is an avid highliner and rock climber, finding inspiration and balance in outdoor adventures. You can find her articles, podcasts, and lectures at the following link: https://linktr.ee/vegi.deni.slacks

Katarína Havran is a Ph.D. student in the program Literatures in English, working under the supervision of Tomáš Kačer. She holds an MA degree in English and Spanish Language and Literature. She spent two semesters studying at the John F. Kennedy Institute in Berlin. Her research interests include American avant-garde theater, the off-off-Broadway scene, and the work of Latina/o writers and dramatists. Her dissertation focuses on the interplay of the visual and textual aspects of María Irene Fornés’s work.

Dominika Beneš Kováčová — As a Ph.D. student of English linguistics at our department, Dominika is particularly interested in digital discourse, identity construction and multimodality. In her dissertation project, she explores the construction and performance of celebrity on Instagram while focusing on the self-presentation of fashion and lifestyle influencers. Dominika has presented the findings of her research at international conferences in Hong Kong, Poland and Hungary. Her work has been published in Internet Pragmatics and Academic Journal of Modern Philology. In her free time, she likes to observe the latest trends sweeping social media and draw new inspiration for future research.

Tagrid Morad is a PhD student. She obtained her MS from Polytechnic Institute of New York University and MA from Ben-Gurion University. She is a member of the European Medical Writers Association. Her specialization is in medical communication. She published several articles in international medical journals, including International Journal of Child Health and Human Development and International Journal on Disability and Human Development. Her work has been also published in the book Bedouin Health: Perspectives from Israel. She presented her work in the fields of disability, literature and pharmacovigilance at international conferences. She has been selected to present her work on the Future of Medicine: The Voice of Medical Writers, at the Inventions and Innovations: Medicine 2040 Symposium. In her dissertation she focuses on creating a multi-dimensional model that assesses the available data in, out and of ethnographic autobiographies or other literary genres. Her recent article emphasizes the importance of ethnographic autobiographies to the scientific community. In 2020, she has been selected to present her research at the IABA World Conference, Life-Writing: Imagining the Past, Present and Future, in Finland. She has been awarded the prestigious Aktion Österreich-Tschechien, AÖCZ-Semesterstipendien scholarship to conduct her research at the University of Vienna.

Stefan Veleski is a Ph.D. student in the Literatures in English program, under the supervision of doc. PhDr. Tomáš Pospíšil, Ph.D. His dissertation research deals with the factors behind the divergent cultural longevity of late Victorian novels, with a focus on bestsellers and canonical novels. His theoretical approach is informed by cultural evolution and biocultural criticism, while his methodology combines qualitative and quantitative, computational approaches to literature. His side projects include various applications of these theoretical and methodological approaches to other domains of cultural production, from contemporary action cinema to “creepypasta”.