Martin Šorm

Martin Šorm is a Czech medievalist and postdoctoral research fellow at the Czech Academy of Sciences, Institute of Philosophy, Centre for Medieval Studies. He also lectures at Charles University, Faculty of Arts, where he earned his BA, MA, and PhD in History. His research centres on medieval literature and imagination, the public uses of history, and medievalism, with particular attention to Czech and French medieval texts, Arthurian romance, gender, and the afterlives of the Middle Ages in modern culture.

Education & Mobility

• 2010–2013: Bachelor's degree in History, Faculty of Arts, Charles University, Prague.
• 2013–2015: Master's degree in History (thesis on Intimacy and Solitude in Chrétien de Troyes and the Czech Court Novel), Faculty of Arts, Charles University.
• 2015–2021: PhD, Institute of Czech History, Faculty of Arts, Charles University (dissertation: Representations and Imaginary of Intimacy in Medieval Literature).
• Study stays: Université de Poitiers (2013-2014), EHESS Paris (2015), University of Orléans (2016).

Research Interests

Šorm’s work bridges literary analysis, cultural history, and public history. He explores how medieval texts—especially Czech and French romances—articulate concepts of intimacy, gender, and power. A second strand investigates how the Middle Ages are appropriated in contemporary politics, education, and popular culture. His ecocritical and material-culture approaches shed new light on medieval lifeworlds and their modern receptions.

Grants & Projects

• 2023–2025: Principal investigator, Critical (post)ethics of Old Czech prose – Czech Academy of Sciences postdoctoral programme.
• 2019–2023: Co-investigator, GAČR EXPRO 19-28415X From performativity to institutionalization: conflict resolution in the late Middle Ages.
• 2018: AV21 Strategy Political and Cultural Identities in the Literature of the Era of Wenceslas IV.
• 2017–2018: GAUK New Council of Smil Flaška – critical return to the source.
• Multiple internal Charles University grants on medieval comedy, Arthurian seminars, and Czech-French historical dialogue.

Teaching

At Charles University he has convened courses and interpretative seminars such as Contradictions and Polyphony, Animal Voice in Medieval Literature, Odysseus the Knight, and interdisciplinary Czech-French seminars on medieval culture.

Editorial & Outreach

He serves on the editorial board of the popular-history magazine Dějiny a současnost and is a member of the Association for History Didactics. His public-facing essays address museum exhibitions, populist historiography, and the politics of historical memory.

Awards

• 2023: CEFRES Platform Award for Best Article in Social Sciences and Humanities.
• 2018: Visegrad Group Academies Young Researcher Award.

Recent Publications

Šorm’s monograph The Squire, the Pupil, and Death: Contradictions and Polyphony in 15th-Century Czech Poetry (2023) and several co-edited volumes—Old Crones: Women and Time in Medieval Europe (2020), The Borders of Laughter: Comedy and Seriousness in Medieval Europe (2019)—have shaped Czech medieval studies. His 2024 articles extend his inquiry into ecocriticism, didactic medievalism, and performativity in medieval narrative.