The Rector of Charles University Prof Milena Králíčková awarded for the first time the Cori Award for contributing to equal opportunities to Prof Alena Macurová from the Institute of Czech and Deaf Studies at CU FA. The Arnošt of Pardubice Award for outstanding pedagogical activity was awarded to Prof Petr Čermák from the Department of Romance Studies at CU FA, and an honorary mention of the Grant Agency of CU was awarded to Kristina Doležalová, a PhD student of Classical Archaeology.
Prof Alena Macurová is the founder of a completely new field in the Czech context: sign language linguistics and Deaf Studies. In 1998, she was at the birth of the Czech in Deaf Communication at CU FA, which later transformed into the current BA degree programme in Languages and Communication of the Deaf and a follow-up MA programme in Czech in Deaf Communication. Thanks to this, research on Czech sign language began to develop in the academic environment. In 1998, Czech sign language was legislatively codified and placed on par with spoken languages.
She significantly contributed to changing the Czech public’s view of the deaf and sign language and was a promoter of the cultural-linguistic approach to deafness. Thanks to her, deaf people began to perceive themselves not as disabled but as members of a linguistic and cultural minority. Thanks to her, deaf people gained wider access to education, they were able to start studying at universities, and more appropriate methods based on a bilingual approach began to penetrate lower-level schools. Together with the teams she assembled and coordinated, she prepared several Czech textbooks for the Deaf and participated in a number of educational projects and programmes.
The prize is named after the Cori family, who jointly received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1947. Gerty Theresa Cori thus became the first woman in the world to receive this award in medicine. The Coris met at the Charles-Ferdinand University in Prague, where they both graduated in medicine. Although they were both from Prague, they had lived permanently in the USA since the 1920s and had already claimed the Nobel Prize as American citizens.
Prof Petr Čermák has been working at the Department of Romance Studies at CU FA for almost 30 years. He has devoted his entire professional life to teaching and scientific work for the university. He mainly engages in the synchronic study of Spanish, especially its morphology and syntax. During his career, he has published many excellent teaching texts. Prof Čermák has supervised and continues to supervise a considerable number of bachelor, master, and doctoral theses.
Mgr. Kristina Doležalová focused on the study of Bronze Age grinding stones from the Kaymakçı site (Turkey), investigating their provenance and traces of wear. Using an innovative experimental method using replicas of stone grinding tools, she contributed to the understanding of the processes involved in grinding and crushing plant and animal food. She also involved high school students in the experiments for the Open Science programme. The results were presented at international conferences and in prestigious journals. These results can be considered excellent in the whole Czech archaeology.
You may find the whole report here.
Photo: Michal Novotný
