Berenika Zeller erlangte einen Masterabschluss in Osteuropa Studien mit den Nebenfächern Geschichte und Sozialwissenschaften von den Universitäten Bern und Fribourg. Während ihrer akademischen Studienaufenthalte studierte sie an der Karlsuniversität in Prag (SEMP-Programm), an der HSE in Moskau und an der Universität Genf (Swiss Mobility-Programm). Seit September 2023 ist sie Doktorandin im vom SNF geförderten Projekt Epicentre of Territorial Revisionism. Ihre Dissertation mit dem vorläufigen Titel Living with the Czechoslovak 'Modernization' in Podkarpatská Rus / Carpatho-Ukraine, 1919–1939 untersucht die lokalen Auswirkungen der tschechoslowakischen Staatsbildung in der multiethnischen Grenzregion Podkarpatská Rus / Karpatenukraine während der Zwischenkriegszeit.
Titel des Promotionsvorhabens
Leben mit dem tschechoslowakischen Modernisierungsprojekt in der Podkarpatská Rus / Karpato-Ukraine, 1919–1939 (Arbeitstitel)
Abstract (English)
Abstract After being detached from Hungary and incorporated into the First Czechoslovak Republic in 1919, Subcarpathian Ruthenia—today Ukraine’s westernmost region—became the target of an ambitious modernization campaign. Framed by Prague as an empty space that had to be filled, a marginal and impoverished periphery, it became the focus of a state-driven modernization effort. Infrastructure was expanded, institutions were built, and thousands of professionals—including teachers, doctors, social workers, Red Cross nurses, and border guards—were dispatched to what was newly termed Podkarpatská Rus. These transformations had far-reaching impacts on the cultural, social, and political fabric of a population long tied to Hungary and reshaped its social topographies. This dissertation explores the lifeworlds of the local inhabitants and how these were shaped by the Czechoslovak state. It aims to study the complex cohabitation and everyday negotiations between Czechoslovak state agents, organizations such as the Czechoslovak Red Cross, and the region’s multiethnic, multilingual communities between 1919 and 1939. In order to deconstruct nationalistic categories, professions serve as analytical lenses to trace how power, identities, and belonging were reconfigured at the intersection of policy and lived experience. A multi-level framework—macro (state logics), meso (professional practice), and micro (individual biographies)—highlights how everyday lifeworlds were both imposed from above and reshaped from below. Theoretically, the project draws on postcolonial studies, engaging with concepts such as hybridity (Bhabha), third space (Soja), and Habsburg postcolonialism. It challenges nation-centered historiography by emphasizing cross-cutting dimensions of class, gender, and profession. Particular attention is paid to gendered professionals, especially nurses, teachers, social workers, border guards, and smugglers, whose work unfolded in spaces of interaction: homes, schools, clinics, and borderlands. Ultimately, the study conceptualizes Subcarpathian Ruthenia as a hybrid space of interaction, shaped as much by Czechoslovak state ambitions as by local adaptations and everyday agency. It reimagines the interwar frontier not as a one-way civilizing mission but as a dynamic, reciprocal process that transformed social boundaries
Forschungsschwerpunkte
Geschichte Mittel- und Osteuropas mit Schwerpunkt Karpatenraum
Die Karpato-Ukraine und die Karpaten im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert
Geschichte der Tschechoslowakei (1918–1939)
Historische Anthropologie
Postkoloniale Studien, kulturelle Hybridität, Third Space, Spatial Turn
Grenzräume und Border Studies
Identitäten, Zugehörigkeiten, Gender
Kulturgeschichte
