Czech research success: Elite EU grant awarded to study the perspectives of Jews, people living with disabilities, and Roma on CEE history
The histories of five Central and Eastern Europe countries as seen from the perspectives of Jews, people living with disabilities, and Roma will be researched by Kateřina Čapková of Charles University’s Faculty of Arts. She has secured a prestigious Advanced Grant from the European Research Council (ERC) worth CZK 62 million [EUR 2.5 million].
Charles University announced the news on 17 June. It was the only project from the Czech Republic to succeed in Europe’s most prestigious scholarly competition this year.
The Advanced Grants of the ERC are considered an exceptional academic award and are only given to internationally recognized figures of important influence in their field. Čapková’s project, entitled Inclusive History of Central and Eastern Europe from the Mid-19th Century till Today (INHIST), is historically the first research project in the field of humanities and social sciences prepared by a Czech institution to succeed in that category.
The grant’s high prestige is underlined by the fact that this year just 11 % of the more than 2,500 applications submitted to the ERC across academic fields succeeded.
Jews, people living with disabilities, and Roma as agents of history
The INHIST project focuses on five countries (the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and Ukraine) and follows the strivings of marginalized groups to emancipate themselves and their active participation in shaping history. Čapková and her team will base their research on sources within communities which have become targets of genocide, oppression, or segregation, and not just during the Second World War.
This research will focus, for instance, on the changing access by members of these groups to citizenship, education, health care, or work in those countries. “I have been awarded EUR 2.5 million for the five-year research project INHIST. We want to write up the histories of five Central and Eastern European countries, the countries of the Visegrád Four plus Ukraine, from the mid-19th century to the present. We are after an inclusive perspective on history. We will try to interpret the histories of the region from the viewpoint of three groups which have been frequently marginalized there: the Roma, the Jews, and people living with disabilities,” Čapková said.
INHIST’s starting point is the conflict between our interpretations of the past and the present. “Most European states are aware that an inclusive conception of society and of education is the key to greater security and resilience,” Čapková said, adding: “However, the history textbooks or exhibitions in museums are still dominated by nation-state stories. In such interpretations, the stories of many other societal actors are never told. As long as historians do not offer an inclusive interpretation of history, our attempts at inclusion in our own societies today will stand in tension with how we think about our own histories.”
Čapková said the project strives to bring together all of her research interests to date and to create a conceptually new perspective on the region. She is placing a great emphasis both on interdisciplinarity and on a strong international team comprising eight experts from seven European countries.
Members of the team have competency in the languages required, including Romani and Yiddish. “I am looking forward to working on this project for many reasons,” Čapková said.
“This is the logical result of my previous research interests. Now everything should be combined to yield something conceptually new. This is a big challenge. For an individual it would be a superhuman task. The basis is the unique team of young researchers whom I have managed to put together. Just choosing them took me two years. They are experts in the histories of the communities selected and in each region and subject. I appreciate their expert competencies immeasurably and look forward to discussing and thinking through this new interpretation together,” Čapková said.
Among the research subjects to be investigated in particular will be, for instance, the perspective of the Romani women of Slovakia who experienced forced sterilization starting in the 1970s, or the perspective of civilians and soldiers injured in Ukraine during the Second World War and in the context of the current Russian aggression there. The outcomes of the project will be a database of resources representing the voices of the communities researched, expert publications, and inclusive history textbooks which will then be tested in the high schools of all the countries involved.
Kateřina Čapková, Ph.D., works as a researcher at Charles University in the Department of Near Eastern Studies in the Faculty of Arts, where she will work full-time as of October 2025 after returning from a research visit to Leipzig, Germany. She has long dedicated herself to the modern history of Jewish people, of migration, of refugees, and of Roma and Sinti in the 20th century.
Dr. Čapková leads the Prague Center for Romani Histories, lectures at New York University in Prague, and has undertaken research visits to Basel, Berlin, Chicago, Oxford, and Vienna. She has authored an award-winning book, Češi, Němci, Židé? [Czechs, Germans, Jews?] and co-authored a publication entitled Prague and Beyond.
Together with Chad Bryant and Diana Dumitru she is preparing a book called The Slánský Trial: A New History, which will be released in 2026 by Oxford University Press. In December 2024 she won Germany’s prestigious Reimar Lüst Preis and also contributed to the publication of the book Moji lidi [My People], which was a finalist for the Magnesia Litera award in the Czech Republic.
European grants are being awarded to research in the Czech Republic more often, other Charles University experts have also been successful
Seven projects by scholars from Charles University have received an ERC grant as part of their call for proposals for 2024. For instance Michal Smetana from Charles University’s Faculty of Social Sciences received a Starting Grant, while Consolidator Grants were awarded to Tomáš Dumbrovský from Charles University’s Faculty of Law at Charles University, Klára Hlouchová from Charles University’s Faculty of Science, Ondřej Pejcha and Martin Setvín from Charles University’s Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, and Jaroslav Švelch from Charles University’s Faculty of Social Sciences.
The Advanced Grant awarded to Čapková was the seventh project. “In the last year, an unprecedented number of ERC grants have been awarded to our country. I am really happy about this and I congratulate all the researchers, whether they work at universities or institutes of the Academy of Sciences. They show through their example that it makes sense to have a long-term vision and not to fear difficult problems and the demands of international comparison. I am also happy that ERC grants were obtained across all scientific fields and across all the categories of individual grants (Starting, Consolidator, Advanced),” said Zdeněk Strakoš of Charles University’s Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, the former chair of the ERC evaluation panel.
Charles University submitted a total of 21 projects to the ERC call for grants for 2024, one-third of which succeeded. The ERC is an elite grant organization of the European Union that was created in 2007.
The ERC awards financial support to the categories of the humanities, natural sciences, physical sciences, social sciences and technical sciences. Its grants are considered quite prestigious globally and most of its financed projects have yielded fundamental discoveries.
The Czech Republic has long scored below-average results compared to other states when it comes to ERC grants.
