

PhD. Programme
The Institute of Ethnology and Social Anthropology of the Slovak Academy of Sciences as an external educational institution conducts doctoral study programmes in the field of “World Cultures and Religions” and “Social Anthropology” both on a full-time basis and in external form.
Doctoral study
As an external educational institution, the Institute of Ethnology and Social Anthropology of the Slovak Academy of Sciences has a contract in place with the Faculty of Arts of Comenius University in Bratislava on conducting doctoral studies in the study programme “World Cultures and Religions” (four-year study, full-time or in external form), and with the Faculty of Social and Economic Sciences of Comenius University in Bratislava for the study programme “Social Anthropology” (three-year study, full-time or in external form).The guarantor of the doctoral studies at the Institute of Ethnology and Social Anthropology SAS is prof. PhDr. Zuzana Beňušková, CSc.
PhD students carry out their studies at the IESA SAS, while being enrolled at the doctoral study desks of the respective faculties. Doctoral studies are conducted based on individual study plans under the leadership of a tutor from the IESA SAS, and consist of scientific, educational, and pedagogical activities. The scientific activities have the form of individual or team research work of the PhD student and are tied to the topic of the dissertation thesis. The educational part consists of attending lectures and seminars, and individual study of expert literature. PhD students complete mandatory and optional courses offered by the respective faculties, and the IESA SAS provides doctoral seminars for the 1st and 2nd year of the studies. The studies include pedagogical activities or other pedagogy-related specialised activities. The studies run based on a credit system of the given faculty, and PhD students must obtain credits from all (scientific, educational, and pedagogical) parts of their studies.
Currently educated PhD theses
- Topic: Self-presentation of people with anti-vaccination convictions with regard to the social representations of conspiracy theorists
Tutor: Zuzana Panczová
PhD student: Natália Slivková
Educational institution: Faculty of Arts, Comenius University in Bratislava
- Topic: The impacts of allocated workplaces of vocational schools on the social integration, social mobility, and employment of the Roma
Tutor: Tomáš Hrustič
PhD student: Edita Rigová
Educational institution: Faculty of Arts, Comenius University in Bratislava
- Topic: Job opportunities and barriers to access to the labour market for inhabitants of marginalised Roma groups from the socio-anthropological perspective
Tutor: Daniel Škobla
PhD student: Korina Mitrová
Educational institution: Faculty of Arts, Comenius University in Bratislava
- Topic: Ageing (old age) with assistance – Design for all and modern technology as an opportunity?
Tutor: Ľubica Voľanská
PhD student: Miroslava Kinczer
Educational institution: Faculty of Social and Economic Sciences, Comenius University in Bratislava
- Topic: Cultural heritage in practice
Tutor: Daniel Luther
Consultant: Alexandra Bitušíková
PhD student: Baračková Katarína
Educational institution: Faculty of Arts, Comenius University in Bratislava
- Topic: Social and cultural aspects of ethnic health inequalities: the case of health status of Roma in Slovakia
Tutor: Andrej Belák
PhD student: Kristína Cichová
Educational institution: Faculty of Arts, Comenius University in Bratislava
- Topic: Post-modern forms of Marian devotion in Central, Eastern, and South-Eastern Europe
Tutor: Tatiana Zachar Podolinská
PhD student: Bahdan Serdziuk
Educational institution: Faculty of Arts, Comenius University in Bratislava
- Topic: Digital scientific collections in ethnology and anthropology: their creation, usability in research and sustainability
Tutor: Juraj Zajonc
Consultant: Andrej Gogora
PhD student: Barbora Siváčková
Educational institution: Faculty of Arts, Comenius University in Bratislava
Graduates (2021/2022)
- Topics: Tramping sub-culture and the Communist regime during the normalisation period (Czechoslovakia / CSSR 1968–1989)
Tutor: Monika Vrzgulová
PhD student: Radoslava Semanová
Educational institution: Faculty of Arts, Comenius University in Bratislava
- Topic: The movement of Slavic-Aryan vedas as an expression of new types of spirituality in Slovakia
Tutor: Tatiana Zachar Podolinská
PhD student: Tomáš Kubisa
Educational institution: Faculty of Arts, Comenius University in Bratislava
Information for applicants
- Applications must be submitted in May of the respective year;
- The application should indicate one of the topics announced by the IESA SAS;
- Please, indicate in your application that you apply for the IESA SAS;
- All topics are opened for full-time study (D);
- Information – Faculty of Arts, Comenius University in Bratislava: https://fphil.uniba.sk/studium/pk/doktorandske-studium/prijimacie-konanie
- Information – Faculty of Social and Economic Sciences, Comenius University in Bratislava_ https://fses.uniba.sk/studium/prijimacie-konanie-uchadzacky-a-uchadzaci/
- Information on PhD studies at the Slovak Academy of Sciences: https://www.sav.sk/?lang=sk&doc=educ-phdstudy
Topics of PhD theses (2022/2023)
Supervisor: PhDr. Juraj Zajonc, CSc.
Program: World Cultures and Religions
Form of study: Full-time
The development of furniture in rural environments was – like other spheres of production and consumption of material artefacts – closely linked to the styles of furniture culture and housing. The purpose of studying this relationship is to identify the influences of the stylistic furniture culture and their manifestations in the rural environment in terms of construction, morphology, and decoration. A comparative analysis of stylistic and rural furniture sets with the same function is the basic starting point of this study. Tracing the specific manifestations of stylistic influences in the historical and socio-economic conditions of the selected localities should be the next stage of the study of the issue. The research should seek answers to questions about the durability of furniture forms with stylistic influences in rural interior furnishings.
Supervisor: Mgr. Ľubica Voľanská, PhD.
Consultant: Mgr. Soňa Gyárfáš Lutherová, PhD.
Program: World Cultures and Religions
Form of study: Full-time
The new suburbs emerging in the vicinity of the large cities are characterized by the specific social structure of inhabitants. The "newcomers" meet the "old settlers "- and they have different needs, motivations, and ideas about everyday life and their living environment. These often originate in their different socio-economic statuses and age structure. The notional dichotomy between the urban and rural disrupts, and a new dynamically transforming suburban area is developing. The project aims to research the suburban environment by focusing on a specific socio-cultural phenomenon (in private and/or public space) or a particular social group (young families, seniors, children...) We invite you to use in-depth qualitative research methods (biographic interviews, participant observation) and to include visual-anthropological research methods (photography, video, comix).
Supervisor: PhDr. Katarína Popelková, CSc.
Program: World Cultures and Religions
Form of study: Full-time
In the late modernity period, an increasing number of areas of our social contacts are penetrated by some type of a cultural offer of experiences. The entire festive culture is affected by the dynamic process of changes. In this process, the common forms of holidays, feasts, social occasions, and cultural events are enriched with new elements of entertainment and with an offer of consumption. Along with this, specific forms of gathering, occasions, and new artistic formations called events are on the rise. Events as strategically conceived social gatherings produced for a certain purpose and aimed at providing an unusual experience, action, and collective entertainment, attract large amounts of people. These changes of global nature, which can be called the process of 'eventisation,' are covered by ethnology also in the framework of the study of the current forms and contents of holidays and festivities in Slovakia. The doctoral theses should be devoted to map the expressions of the process of eventisation on the example of a selected festival and to learn about it using qualitative ethnological research methods.
Supervisor: PhDr. Monika Vrzgulová, CSc.
Program: World Cultures and Religions
Form of study: Full-time
The work should examine the images in which the selected social groups of Slovak society reflect the causes, course, and consequences of November 1989. The main concepts are biographical (individual), respectively the social memory and cultural memory. Individual, resp. social memory is a living layer of memories whose bearers represent a generation of experiences - those who have survived a given historical period. On the one side, cultural memory consists of knowledge and facts about the past stored as written and visual documents in archives, artifacts in museums, books in libraries, or documentaries or works of art (films, photographs, works of art). On the other, collected images, symbols, and facts are selected and publicly disseminated through memorial activities, ceremonies, and rituals on Memorial Day in memorable, often authentic places associated with a given historical period or event. The result of the work should be to affect the relationship between these categories of memory and their mutual influence. The essential research method should be the oral history method, supplemented by other sources.
Supervisor: Mgr. Andrej Belák, PhD.
Program: World Cultures and Religions
Form of study: Full-time
The project aims at the social and cultural determinants of the rather poor health status of Roma in Slovakia. Drawing on previous findings, it will focus especially on aspects researched, thus far, the least, namely the causes and effects of various both direct and indirect forms of anti-Roma racism, of related both local and central policies as well as of the local standards practices within related epidemiological research. The results of the project are expected to deliver new cues not only regarding contemporary related debates in socio-cultural (medical) anthropology but also knowledge readily applicable within public health.
Supervisor: Prof. Zuzana Beňušková, PhDr., CSc.
Program: World Cultures and Religions
Form of study: Full-time
As a specific phenomenon, family business and family companies are receiving attention from an economic and legal point of view. The basis of such companies is the intertwining of work and private life, which has an impact on family relationships. The ethnology of this topic paid attention to the agricultural and craft environment of the pre-industrial period. The research will focus on the example of case studies, the functioning of the family and the company, the strategy of sustainability the company as well as its position in the local community and in the current political-economic system.
Supervisor: Prof. Zuzana Beňušková, PhDr., CSc.
Program: World Cultures and Religions
Form of study: Full-time
The regionalization of Slovakia from the ethnological aspect is constructed on the basis of the administrative division of Slovakia until 1922 in combination with cultural and historical elements based on traditional folk culture as part of the cultural heritage. At present, new systems of identifying, maintaining and highlighting cultural specificities, institutionally managed from different levels, are involved in the creation of a cultural region. The question of the re-interpretation of the cultural regions of Slovakia and their definition arises. The aim of the work is to analyze these systems and their effects on the identity of the region in the selected cultural region, to verify the validity of the perception of the region's borders, its representations and the longevity of cultural elements associated with the region.
Supervisor: Mgr. Tatiana Zachar Podolinská, PhD.
Program: World Cultures and Religions
Form of study: Full-time
Research of the dynamic of the manifestations and forms of Marian devotion in the post-IIWW period up to the present in the context of turbulent political transformations (communism, post-communism, post-transformation period) and the change of socio-cultural constellations in terms of different trajectories of modernization processes in Western Europe and socialist resp. post-socialist region's countries. The project can focus on any particular manifestation of this dynamic: material culture, Marian legends, religious tourism, places of pilgrimages, qualitative research of the miracle narratives, popular religion, folk faith, the economics of sacrum, etc. or it can further develop our knowledge on broader and more general patterns of discursive development of Marian devotion throughout the region in the respective period in a comparative perspective.
Supervisor: Juraj Zajonc, PhDr., CSc.
Consultant: Mgr. Andrej Gogora, PhD.
Program: World Cultures and Religions
Form of study: Full-time
The submitted topic of doctoral study requires from the applicant an interdisciplinary (ethnology and anthropology - archiving - digital humanities) and theoretical-applied approach (interpretation and heuristics - creation of practical outputs and methodologies). It focuses on current approaches and trends in the design and construction of digital scientific collections in the humanities, especially in ethnology and anthropology. Emphasis is placed on the problem of metadata structures of scientific collections, the applicability of scientific collections in the practice of humanities research and their further perspective use (scientific and non-scientific). The study also includes professional activities at the Department of Scientific Collections of IESA SAS, including the practical preparation and creation of specific sets of digital scientific collections.
Supervisor: Mgr. Tatiana Zachar Podolinská, PhD.
Consultant: Mgr. Vladimír Bahna, PhD.
Program: World Cultures and Religions
Form of study: Full-time
The subject of this research theme is social conservatism, understood broadly as any socio-cultural value system that promotes strict adherence to social norms and emphasizes social exclusivity. Individuals who embrace such values are committed to social conventions and traditions that are seen as a means of promoting group cohesion and are characterized by group conformity and collectivism. The proposed research topic approaches this issue in the context of cognitive and evolutionary anthropology. It is focused on the social and psychological mechanisms and contexts of transmission of values and beliefs which fall under the umbrella of social conservatism (and related concepts of traditionalism, religious fundamentalism, ethnocentrism, etc.) and takes into account a comparison of cases of stable persistence (eventually new adoption) and, conversely, the abandonment of socially conservative values and beliefs.
Supervisor: Mgr. Daniel Luther, CSc.
Consultant: prof. PhDr. Alexandra Bitušíková CSc.
Program: World Cultures and Religions
Form of study: Full-time
The aim of the doctoral study will be research and analysis of contemporary approaches of selected localities/communities to local cultural heritage. The topic may be connected to either urban environment (preferably small towns) or rural localities. The key approach (in addition to theoretical knowledge advancement in critical heritage studies) will be fieldwork in selected localities that represent a simple scale of societal evaluation and use of local cultural heritage: 1. localities that do not recognize their heritage or are unable to identify it, and therefore cannot see it as an opportunity of their development; 2. localities that can identify their heritage, but do not know how to use it; and 3. localities that are able to define their heritage and profit from it, or use it as a tourist attraction, which might be connected with a number of challenges. The research should cover all these categories.