Refugees and citizens in East-Central Europe in the 20th century

Karla Koutková

As a member of the “Unlikely Refuge?” team, Karla works on the post-communist refugees and the re-emergence of the nation state in the 1990s, focusing on the formation of migration and asylum policies in East-Central Europe.  Interested in how ideas of citizenship, identity and belonging travel across generations in the post-communist space, her research within the project further explores the pertinence of these issues among ex-Yugoslav migrants to Czech Republic, Hungary, and Austria.

Karla is a policy anthropologist with a doctorate in Political Science from Central European University in Budapest. After a decade in teaching, research and consultancy in the area of state-building, public policy, and social inclusion in the post-conflict countries of Southeast Europe, Hungary, Austria and Canada, she is now back in the Czech Republic. Her current interests revolve around refugeedom and humanitarianism in Central Europe in response to forced migration from former Yugoslavia during the violent conflicts of 1990s.

Contact: koutkova@mua.cas.cz