About Us

Centre for Study of Popular Culture (CSPK) is a non-profit organization established in Prague (CZ) in 2009. Its typical projects are seminars, conferences, workshops, and other public events, such as alternative city walks, university classes, and exhibitions.

CSPK is interested in the topics of popular culture as an important factor for societal imagination and representations, as well as in subcultures embedding the lifestyle promoted by leisure time activities.

CSPK structures its activities in three pillars:
research and education,
societal outreach,
campaigning.
Conferences:
Heritage, Memory and Community in Electronic Music and Dance Cultures, 14 – 15 May 2026, Prague (CZ).
Negotiating the Revolt: Punk in Times of Political Transformation, 16 – 18 May 2025, Prague (CZ).
Exploration of Class, Distinction and Habitus in Popular Culture of Central and Eastern Europe, 27 – 28 October 2023, Prague (CZ).
Studying Popular Culture in Eastern European Transition. »Popular Cultures«, 8th Annual Conference of the Kulturwissenschaftliche Gesellschaft (KWG), 27 – 30 September 2023, Saarbrücken (DE).
Youth, popular music and the class in times of post-socialist change, 18 June 2021, Olomouc (CZ).
Mainstream! Popular Culture in Central and Eastern Europe, 29 – 31 October 2020, Prague (CZ).
Building the Scenes? Fan/zines in Central Eastern and South Eastern Europe before and after the Fall of the Berlin Wall, 22 – 23 February 2019, Prague (CZ).
Beyond the Café/Pub Split: Interlocking Urbanity and Rurality in the Popular Culture of East Central European Societies, 30 – 31 October 2015, Prague (CZ).
“Listening to the Wind of Change”: Popular Culture and Post-Socialist Societies in East-Central Europe, 18 – 19 October 2013, Prague (CZ).
Other activities:
Thematic series of audio-visual performances in Prague and Bratislava
Transregional (Cross-Border) workshop (Moravia and Saxony, spring 2011)
Public lectures in major Czech university centres (Brno, Olomouc, Plzeň, Hradec Králové, Liberec)
Alternative city walks and guided tours of Brno and Prague
Publication of a volume “Popular culture in Czech space” (September 2013).
Research axis:
popular culture and gender,
alternative culture, subcultures and social movements,
popular culture, nationalism, racism and xenophobia,
festivities and cultural heritage,
cultural memory and loss,
migration cultures,
culture, taste and class,
culture and age,
pop-folk and rural urban cultures,
early popular culture,
other topics related to popular culture, particularly during state socialism and post-socialism in Central Eastern Europe.
Major partnerships:
University of Warsaw (PL),
Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague (CZ),
Charles University, Prague (CZ),
University of Vienna (AT),
University of Ljubljana (SI),
Juraj Dobrila University, Pula (HR),
National Museum of the Czech Republic, Prague (CZ),
Palacký University, Olomouc (CZ),
Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research, Zagreb (HR),
Slovak Academy of Sciences, Bratislava (SK),
Laterna Magica, Budapest (HU),
Av Amari Vysočina, Jihlava (CZ),
Archive of Czech and Slovak Subcultures, Prague (CZ).