Postdoctoral Research Fellow, School of Modern Languages
Biography
Diána Vonnak is a social anthropologist focusing on cultural heritage regimes in Eastern Europe and beyond. She looks at the intersections between political-economic regimes and heritage regimes, the role of soft power and cultural diplomacy in shaping heritage futures, and the role of experts in various contexts. She worked in Ladakh on vernacular architecture and solar energy use, looking at ways renewable energy transitions could be facilitated in that high-altitude desert region, and she worked on applied research projects concerned with the upkeep of social housing in Hungary. Her PhD focused on heritage conflicts in Lviv. Together with Victoria Donovan, currently she is looking at the ways the war has changed heritage work and archiving in Ukraine, focusing on the Donbas. She is at work on a book about the post-Maidan heritage policies in Ukraine, focusing on Lviv.
Selected publications
Vonnák, D. (2020) Heritage Preservation and the Transforming State in Lviv: A Changing Professional Field . Doctoral thesis, Durham University. http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/13796/
Csizmady, A., Hegedüs, J., & Vonnák, D. (2019). A housing regime unchanged: The rise and fall of foreign-currency loans in Hungary. Corvinus Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, 10(2), 3-33.
Vonnák, D. (2017). Lafrenz Samuels, Kathryn & Trinidad Rico (eds). Heritage keywords: rhetoric and redescription in cultural heritage. The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 23(3), 634-635
Vonnák, D. (2016). [Review of Who needs experts? Counter-mapping cultural heritage, by J. Schofield]. The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 22(2), 442–444.
