Andrea Průchová Hrůchová is the founder of the Platform for the Study and Promotion of Visual Culture Fresh Eye. She received her PhD at the Faculty of Social Sciences at Charles University in Prague. She works as a postdoc researcher at the Czech Academy of Sciences and at the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes. She teaches visual communication at Charles University in Prague and Scholastika. She has translated into Czech three seminal books from the field of visual culture studies: How to See the World by N. Mirzoeff, Picture Theory. Essays on Verbal and Visual Representations by W. J. T. Mitchell and Ways of Seeing by John Berger. In 2019, she published an artistic book, We Have Never Been Earth (Visual Studies Workshop Press). Her own research work has been published by the European Journal of Cultural Studies (2020), Palgrave Macmillan (2020, 2015), Springer Publishing House (2017) and University of Turku Press (2018). In 2015, she received the Fulbright Scholarship in cooperation with NYU Steinhardt and Pratt Institute, in 2018 she was an artist-in-residence in the Visual Studies Workshop. She regularly attends international conferences and delivers public lectures.
What are the frequent contradictions between theory and practice in the field of public pedagogy? In this open reflection, Andrea Průchová Hrůzová revisits a decade-long experience of running the Prague-based Platform for the Study and Promotion of Visual Culture Fresh Eye, while mapping the systemic, institutional and discursive limits of critical public pedagogy within the realm of the public education system.