Creative Cities: Oxford-Prague Graduate Workshop

In June 2019 I had the chance to participate in Creative Cities: Oxford-Prague Graduate Workshop, an event organized for students from the Oxford Centre for History of Science, Medicine and Technology (University of Oxford) and the Department of Philosophy and History of Science (Charles University, Prague) to meet and present their work-in-progress, debate, and make future connections.

It was amazing to hear all about other people’s projects and dissertations and get relevant and helpful feedback to my own work. I also appreciated the possibility to get to know so many scholars with a variety of different and fascinating study alignments and to hold fun but erudite discussion over a pint of beer or cider during the informal events with them. Oxford is a very diverse city and participants were from all over the world. One other student was from Russia and did research on gulags in the city where I was born! Not to mention how happy I was to see that people outside of the Czech Republic can be interested in my research that is focused mostly on local Czech personas.

Katerina Parizkova

As it was my first visit to Oxford I was excited to see all the memorable places there – for example the lamp that was in The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and The Eagle and Child pub that was famously fancied by the Inklings. We also had a tour through the Oxford Botanic Garden and some college buildings. The highlight of our tourist activities was a detailed guided tour of the History of Science Museum where we were kindly given access outside of the normal opening hours.

Such events are highly motivating and inspiring, and I will be glad to see some of our colleagues next year in Prague and return the hospitality we received.