Jitka Králová

I am a social anthropologist interested in the study of capitalism, social and economic justice and (in)equality, and political mobilisations. Originally from Prague, I have spent most of my twenties studying and living abroad. I discovered my passion for social anthropology during my undergraduate studies at SOAS University of London, graduating with a thesis on collective memory and identity among Tibetan refugees in Northern India. I then completed my masters in Social Anthropology at the University of Oxford with an ethnographic project on resistance towards Prague’s mass touristification.

During the pandemic, I got the opportunity to work as an ethnographer on a large Horizon 2020 project POPREBEL, investigating the rise of populist movements in Central and Eastern Europe. This project made me think deeper about the profound entanglement of socioeconomic conditions (economy/class), sense of belonging (culture) and the nature of available political representation (politics), in the context of postsocialist neoliberal capitalism. This also inspired my current doctoral project (UCL SSEES), in which I look at the connection between experiences of personal indebtedness and politics among debtors living in one of the Czech Republic’s deindustrializing regions.