Biography
Johana completed her doctoral research at the University of Oxford in 2018 with a thesis entitled Silesian Identity: The Interplay of Memory, History and Borders, in which she provided an ethnographic account of contemporary Czech Silesian identity (or identities) and its negations. She was a teaching fellow at the University of Warwick 2018-2019 and a post-doctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Germany 2019-2021. Currently she is a research fellow at the Institute of Ethnology, Czech Academy of Sciences (2019-present) and a visiting research fellow at the Department of History, King’s College London.
Research interests and PhD supervision
- Difficult Heritage and Identity
- Memory Politics and Memory Studies
- Nationalism and Populism
- Migration and Displacement
- Collective Memory and Commemoration
Her research interest lies in the region of Czech Silesia specifically, and Central and Eastern Europe more generally. In her work, she is focusing on the dynamic relationship between collective memory, populism, and the historical legacy of forced displacements. The main questions that drive her intellectual curiosity relate to the political use of the past in the present, to possibilities and limits of collective identity formation, and to exploring the most suitable methods and methodological positions to research these areas.
Selected publications
Wyss, J. (2021) ‘Exploring Populism Through the Politics of Commemoration’. In: Europe-Asia Studies. Open Access, Online first. https://doi.org/10.1080/09668136.2021.1991279
Wyss, J. (2021) ‘Die schlesische Identität: Dem methodologischen Nationalismus zum Trotz’. In: Maršálek, Z. and Neminář, J. (Eds.) Zwangsrekrutiete in die Wehrmacht. Prague: The Institute for Contemporary History.
Wyss, J. (2021) ‘Silence and its Many Forms: A Reflective Response’ In: Cultural Analysis. Vol.19, No. 1.
Wyss, J. (2021) ‘The Power of Silence and Silencing Power’. In: Fahrun, H. (ed.) Women’s history as a topic and Oral history as a method. Transfer between International Youth Projects, Educational Practice and Research Silenced Memories. Berlin: Kreisau-Initiative e. V.
Wyss, J. (2020) ‘Stones Do Not Forget: The Symbolic Struggle Between Forgetting and Being Forgotten’. In: Gilbert, C., McLoughlin, K., and Munro, N. (Eds.) On Commemoration. Oxford: Petr Lang.