Skip to main content

Zora Piskačová

Status: PhD Candidate

Adviser: Chad Bryant and Karen Auerbach

Graduate Email: zora.piskacova@unc.edu Twitter

Curriculum Vitae

Education

B.A. Franklin University Switzerland, 2017
M.A. Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, 2019

Research Interests

I study Modern Europe with emphasis on interwar Poland and Czechoslovakia. Topically, I’m interested in urban history, nationalism studies, borderland studies, and peace and conflict studies. My dissertation, “Torn Men in a Torn Town: Municipal Administrators in Cieszyn and Český Těšín, 1918-38,” is a transnational urban history of the divided city of Teschen in the interwar period. It examines how small-town leaders changed, or did not change, their long-established practices in response to the borders established following the First World War. In doing so, it explores tensions between the newly established national centers and municipal administrators on the periphery and illuminates the crucial role of subnational actors in peace-making.

Some Notable Publications

“A ‘Common Enterprise’? The Role of Utility Infrastructure in the Divided City of Teschen, 1920–1938,” Slavic Review 82, no. 4 (2023): 926–48, https://doi.org/10.1017/slr.2024.8.

Notable Awards and Fellowships

  • 2024-25 Harry Frank Guggenheim Emerging Scholar Award (Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation)
  • 2024 Peter Filene Innovative Teaching Award (UNC-CH History Department)
  • 2024-25 Ross and Charlotte Johnson Family Dissertation Fellowship (UNC-CH Royster Society of Fellows)
  • 2022 Beth Holmgren Graduate Student Essay Prize (Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies)
  • 2021-22 Bucerius Ph.D. Fellowship “Beyond Borders" (ZEIT-Stiftung Ebelin und Gerd Bucerius)

    • Courses Offered

    Instructor of Record at Charles University (Prague, Czech Republic):
    JTM 505: The City in Modern Central Europe (Fall/Winter 2021)

    Instructor of Record at UNC Chapel Hill:
    CZCH 401: Elementary Czech I (Fall 2023)
    CZCH 402: Elementary Czech II (Spring 2024)

    Teaching Assistant at UNC Chapel Hill:
    HIST/JWST/PWAD 262: History of the Holocaust (Spring 2023)
    HIST 159: 20th Century Europe (Fall 2020)
    HIST 140: The World Since 1945 (Fall 2019, Spring 2020, Spring 2021)
    HIST 101: A History of Lies, Conspiracies, and Misinformation (Fall 2022)


    554A Pauli Murray Hall*
    102 Emerson Dr., CB #3195
    Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3195

    *Though the History Department uses the name Pauli Murray Hall for our building, on official maps you will find it as Hamilton Hall. Joseph Grégoire de Roulhac Hamilton’s intellectually dishonest historical and archival work promoted white supremacy. In contrast, Pauli Murray marshaled unassailable evidence and analysis in the service of racial and gender equality. In July 2020, all of the departments housed in the building agreed to adopt the name Pauli Murray Hall in place of Hamilton Hall. An official request with the Chancellor is pending. For more information, please see here.
    phone: 919.962.2115
    fax: 919.962.1403
    For general questions, please email staff directly through the People menu before calling. The History Department thanks you.
    Black and White   Black and White   Black and White   Black and White