Diána Vonnák
Diána Vonnák
QUALIFICATIONS
2020 Ph.D., Social Anthropology, Durham University
2014 M.A., Socio-Cultural Anthropology, Durham University
2012 B.A., Liberal Arts (Philosophy), Eötvös Loránd University
2012 B.A., Classics, University of Szeged
PRINCIPAL RESEARCH INTERESTS
Heritage Regimes; Cultural and Memory Politics; Anthropology of Violence; Regime changes; Post-socialism and Post-colonialism; Institutional Ethnography; Anthropology of History; Ukraine; East-Central Europe
RESEARCH PROFILE
I am an ethnographer of heritage and memory. I am interested in the links between political economy and discourse in how the past is managed and mobilised. My work focuses on how heritage institutions and professionals work in contexts of crisis, revolutions, armed conflict and rapid political change. I am particularly invested in exploring the afterlife of political projects, and the public negotiation of state collapse, independence and the dissolution of empires.
Since 2014, I have worked predominantly in Ukraine, focusing on how the Maidan revolution, the Donbas war and later the escalation of the Russian aggression in Ukraine shaped the mandate, vision and stakes of heritage and memory institutions.
My current project within MEMPOP explores how legacies of past violence, especially displacement and mass repression gain new traction in the ongoing war in Ukraine, what this means for local memory activists in Halychyna (Galicia), and for Polish-Ukrainian relations.
Prior to joining the Institute of Ethnology, I held research fellowships at the University of Stirling, the University of St Andrews, and a teaching fellowship at University College London. I am a mentor and course convenor in the Invisible University for Ukraine at the Central European University since 2022. In addition to my academic work, I have been involved in applied research projects (UK FCDO, British Council Hungary, and EU-funded projects within the H2020, Creative Europe, Urban Innovative Action schemes). I have worked on projects dealing with Jewish heritage, adaptive reuse, and social resilience.
Journal Articles
2023 This Happened to Us for the Second Time War-preparedness, Risk, Responsibility and the Evacuation of Donbas Museums in 2022 Museum and Society 21 (2): 4-16.
2019 A housing regime unchanged: The rise and fall of foreign-currency loans in Hungary Corvinus Journal of Sociology and Social Policy 10 (2): 3-33. (co-authors Csizmady, A. and Hegedüs, J.)
2019 Lakásrezsim és a devizahitel-válság: intézményi és egyéni stratégiák. Szociológiai Szemle 29(1): 4-32 (co-authors Csizmady, A. and Hegedüs, J.)
Book Chapters
2025 Vonnák, D. – Otrishchenko N.: Collecting Testimonies in an Ongoing War: Precarity, Solidarity and the Glass Ceiling in International Academia. In: Linda Green, Maria Six-Hohenbalken, Nerina Weiss (eds.): The Routledge Handbook of Mass Violence. London: Routledge
2024 Should Have Known, In: Ostap Sereda, Balázs Trencsényi, Tetiana Zemliakova and Guillaume Lancereau (eds.): Invisible University for Ukraine. Essays on
2025 – Memory and Populism from Below (MEMPOP), ERC-2022-STG (ID: 101076092), PI: Wyss, Johana. Coordinated by the Institute of Ethnology, Czech Academy of Sciences. Postdoctoral Researcher.
External Reviewing
Journal Articles Manuscript Review: Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute; History and Anthropology; International Journal of Heritage Studies
Invited Talks, Public Lectures or Roundtables
2024 May, 24. Konkurencia, szövetség, ellenőrzés? Civil kezdeményezések és az állam a háborús Ukrajnában [Competition, alliance, accountability? Civic initiatives and the state in wartime Ukraine]; Institute of Ethnology, Hungarian National Academy of Sciences, Budapest, Hungary
2023 November, 17. Stepping in, Helping out, Competing with…? State and civic actors in Ukraine’s wartime heritage work; School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography, University of Oxford (invited speaker at the Departmental Seminar Series), Oxford, UK
November, 15. A Professional Community of Care: wartime civic professional mobilisation in the heritage sector in Ukraine; Contested Heritage. A multilevel analysis of the securitization of heritage and its challenges for EU and UN actorness (COHERE), University of Leuven, Belgium
May, 2. Wartime Heritage Rescue in Ukraine: Cooperation Beyond the State; Prisma Prisma Ukraïna – Research Network Eastern Europe, Berlin, Germany
2022 November, 22. Museum Evacuations: Learning from the Challenges. In the Face of Russian Aggression: how to protect and develop cultural heritage in Ukraine. En/counter/points lecture series, Newcastle University, UK
2019 October, 10. Governing a City Against the Vertical State: Lviv's quest for decentralisation; Gellner Seminar, Charles University, Prague, Czechia
