Český lid, 1/2028 – Special Issue
WALKING MATTERS: Kinaesthetic Modes of Memory, Belonging and Research
Guest editors: Michal Korhel (Institute of Slavic Studies, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw), Jana Nosková (Institute of Ethnology of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Brno), Sabine Stach (Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe, Leipzig)
Walking, hiking, pilgrimage, biking or even running – moving of one’s own accord – are essential for exploring historic sites, experiencing landscapes, researching cultures and commemorating past events and people. Walking is not just a way of getting from A to B; it can also be used deliberately to stimulate thoughts, memories or relationships, and to foster a sense of identity. For more than ten years, hundreds of people have each year walked the 32-kilometre “March of Reconciliation” (“Pouť smíření”) route from Pohořelice to Brno. In May 1945, some 20,000 German-speaking residents of Brno were driven out along this same route towards Austria. In Warsaw, more than 12,000 people took part in this year’s 35th commemorative run for the “heroes” of the 1944 Warsaw Uprising (“Bieg Powstania Warszawskiego”). In addition, there are numerous other commemorative activities that are based on physical, and in some cases athletic, practices. For instance, people hike through their families’ regions of origin, traverse former borders, retrace historical routes, undertake pilgrimages to historic sites or explore landscapes through tourism and everyday movement.
For researchers in the fields of Memory Studies, Heritage Studies or Public History, such kinaesthetic modes of engaging with the past require a broader methodological toolkit: they must become physically active themselves. Consequently, researchers are increasingly drawing on methods that anthropologists have been using and discussing for many years. Approaches such as walking ethnography, participant observation, mobile interviews and sensory ethnography are based on the idea that knowledge is inextricably linked to the physical and spatial context in which it is created. When walking alongside their interviewees, researchers perceive the landscape differently from how they would in a stationary interview. Conversations, memories and narratives can also be transformed by movement and encounters with specific places. This raises the question of the positionality of the ‘walking’ researcher; terrain, weather, physical exertion, speed, breaks and shared spatial orientation all influence the research situation. Therefore, walking ethnography is not merely a mobile variant of the qualitative interview, but rather a research approach that actively incorporates the body, movement and the environment into the production of knowledge.
This special issue explores the relationship between movement, perception and knowledge. Taking walking as a case study (while also considering other forms of non-motorised movement), it examines the interplay between memory, belonging and research. It considers the various contexts and forms of mobile experience, ranging from everyday walks and hikes to tourist activities, border crossings, journeys through ancestral landscapes, pilgrimages, processions, memorial marches, memory walks and historical re-enactments. Particular attention is given to the interplay between physicality, landscape, materiality, movement, repetition, collective participation, emotion and a sense of belonging. How can the increasing use of the body as a medium of memory be explained and explored? What relationship exists between historical tradition, individual memory, political activism and the search for unique experiences? It also asks: How does the perception of a place change when it is traversed rather than merely observed? In what ways are memories activated through movement and tied to the landscape? What role do distance, speed, rhythm, exhaustion, the weather or the terrain play? In terms of explicit remembrance practices, the tension between the significance attributed to such events and how participants actually experience them is also worth noting, as well as is the overlap between leisure, sport, commemoration and historical education that characterises many of these formats.
Český lid / Czech Ethnological Journal is the leading, peer-reviewed Czech ethnological journal, published in print and in diamond open access by the Institute of Ethnology of the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague; it is regularly indexed and abstracted in Scopus (Q2). The aim of this special issue, co-edited by Michal Korhel, Jana Nosková and Sabine Stach, is to encourage dialogue among scholars working in ethnology and anthropology, history, human geography, memory and heritage studies, mobility studies and tourism research. The focus is on contemporary examples (generally dating from around 1989 onwards), though historical genealogies may be included where they are relevant to understanding current practices. We particularly welcome contributions that present innovative methodological approaches through concrete case studies, while also exploring the analytical value of a kinaesthetic perspective for understanding space, memory and belonging.
Possible topics include, among others:
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Walking and remembering: commemorative marches, memory walks, pilgrimages, processions, historical re-enactments, commemorative marathons and runs, and other forms of physically practised remembrance;
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Walking and belonging: heritage tourism, genealogical journeys, return journeys to regions of origin and movement through familial and biographical landscapes;
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Walking and borders: border hikes and bike tours, routes along former and current borders, such as the Iron Curtain Trail, cross-border routes and the physical experience of political spaces;
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Walking and landscape: the perception and appropriation of historical, post-industrial, post-Soviet or post-socialist landscapes through movement;
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Walking and heritage: themed walks, heritage trails, tourist routes and the production of historical landscapes;
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Walking and mobility: the relationship between walking and other forms of physical movement such as running or cycling; questions of speed, rhythm and physical exertion; the experiences of people with physical disabilities, including questions of inclusion and accessibility;
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Walking as method: walking interviews, walking ethnography, mobile and sensory methods, and issues of positionality, reflexivity and knowledge production.
Of particular interest are contributions that connect these areas and view walking as a situated and embodied practice of perception and knowledge production.
Abstracts (max. 500 words, in English) should outline the research question(s) as well as the theoretical and methodological approach adopted and can be submitted to sabine.stach@leibniz-gwzo.de and noskova@eu.cas.cz.
Contributors should also include a short, 100-word biographical note (in English).
Deadline for abstracts: 15 November 2026
Notification of acceptance: 15 December 2026
Full chapter submission: 15 June 2027
For further information, please contact Sabine Stach sabine.stach@leibniz-gwzo.de.