Fellowship received in 2019, 2020, 2021
Zbynek Mucha is a doctoral student at the Institute of Asian Studies, Faculty of Arts at Charles University in Prague, in History and Asian Studies. His dissertation focuses on migration from Bangladesh to Central Europe and examines the role of native brokers in facilitating migration, spanning from colonial times to the present. His research uses anthropological methods, including digital methods, and a critical reflection of policy-making and policy practice.
Besides his alma mater, as a Sylff fellowship holder (2019-2020, 2020-2021), Zbynek studied at leading European universities, including Oxford University (2020), the University of Bonn (2019-2020), and the University of Warsaw (2020-2021). He has also held a full-time fellowship at Wirth Institute for Austrian and Central European Studies at the University of Alberta (2022/2023). In 2022, he was a non-stipendary junior research fellow at the Migration Scenarios and Social Change study unit, Department of Sociology and Social Research, University of Trento. He was also awarded a research grant by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation at the University of Trento (2024). Zbynek has also held stipends from the University of Vienna (2022) and the Austrian Agency for Education and Internationalisation (2023/2024) to conduct research in collaboration with the Digital Ethnography Initiative at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Vienna.
In addition to research, Zbynek serves as a board member of Czech Association of Doctoral Students. He has also been participating in diverse public outreach activities, namely popularisation of current issues related to migration, Bangladesh and Tibet via various online platforms (TV, edited websites, a blog on social media), public lectures and debates and public presentations of a student-led project Online Encyclopedia of Migration. He is also actively engaged in policy-making as a member of a political party in the Czech Republic.
Study of languages is one of Zbynek‘s greatest passions. As a graduate in South Asian Studies, he received a thorough linguistic training in Indian languages, particularly in Bengali, and both classical and colloquial Tibetan. He enjoys an active lifestyle, travelling and exploring indigenous knowledge and understandings of the world.
