Eva-Maria Walther

Eva-Maria Walther is a Research Fellow at the University of Vienna's Research Platform for the Study of Transformations and Eastern Europe. She holds a PhD from the Graduate School for East and Southeast European Studies at the University of Regensburg. Her research focuses on urban ethnography in Czech and Slovak cities, exploring how visual smog (urban clutter) becomes a platform for negotiating historical and future urban identities.

Education: Social Anthropology studies at Universities of Tübingen (Germany), Pécs (Hungary), and Stockholm (Sweden). Dissertation: 'Helping refugees in Slovakia: Messy encounters, moral dilemmas, and mixed emotions' (2020).

Research interests include: Anthropology of East/Central Europe, activism, mobility studies, urban studies, visual anthropology, and moral-emotional dimensions of social interactions. Current project examines how 'visual smog' (overloaded public visual stimuli) in post-socialist cities becomes a site of political-cultural contestation over urban space's past and future.

Publications span refugee support dynamics in Slovakia, governmental transitions, and innovative pedagogies using performance art to engage historical trauma. Her work bridges ethnographic fieldwork with critical urban theory and visual studies.