Dr Zuzana Hrdlickova

MA|PhD

tel:+44 (0)20 7919 7707
Email:z.hrdlickova@gold.ac.uk


I am a post-doctoral researcher at CSISP, working on the ERC funded ‘Organising Disaster’ project with Michael Guggenheim, Joe Deville and Luke Evans. I completed my PhD in 2009 at the Charles University, titled ‘The Impact of Sri Lankan Civil War on the Social Status of Sri Lankan Tamil Women’. I examined the link between conflict and social change analysing the effects of war on Tamil females, using socio-cultural anthropology as the main framework and drawing on my two and half years field research and background in South Asian studies. Alongside questions around gender, I looked at issues including marital habits, mobility, agency and locality. I have also conducted comparative research in the Nilgiri Hills in South India studying the impact of globalization on the Irula and Kota tribal communities, looking at issues of community development and oral traditions. I have worked as a humanitarian worker in disaster-relief and war contexts and I taught courses on Anthropology and Development at the Charles University.

Research interests

Anthropology of Disasters, Disaster Preparedness and Management, Development, Gender, South Asia

Selected publications

(2011) ‘The Impact of the Sri Lankan Conflict on the Social Status of Tamil Women’. In:. D. Madavan, G.Dequirez and E. Meyer (eds): Les communautés tamoules et le conflit sri lankais, Paris 2011, L'harmattan, pp. 73-104

(2011) ‘Irula Society’. In: Encyclopaedia of the Nilgiri Hills. Paul Hockings (ed), Manohar Books, pp.: 832-835.

(2011) ‘Irula Religion’. Ibid., pp. 442-45.

(2009) ‘Dynamics of Female Emancipation: The Case of Tamil Women and Sri Lankan Civil War’, In: Tomandl, Ivo (ed). Manuscripta Ethnologica, Prague, Charles University, Faculty of Arts, Institute of Ethnology, pp. 3-11.

(2008)  ‘Cultural Interpretations of Tamil Tigresses and Tamil Women Employed in Non Traditional Ways. Two New Phenomena in Tamil Sri Lankan Society’. In: Oriental Archive 76,  pp. 459-489.