Petra James works on the question of the comparative history of modernisms and avant-gardes. Her dissertation focused on the comparison of the Czech post-avant-garde with the French and American neo-avant-garde movements. She has worked on the cultural relations between Bohemia and France, especially through the figures of cultural mediators such as Zdenka Braunerová, Miloš Marten, Paul Claudel and F. X. Šalda. Her current research project, funded by the Wiener-Anspach Foundation (2022-2024) When Rural Meets Urban, in collaboration with the University of Oxford, focuses on the specificities of modernism in Bohemia and in particular on the underexplored issue of Czech-German dialogue in the formation of Czech modernism. The project is supported by additional funding from the ULB Research Promotion Fund (FER; 2022-2024) to map regional Bohemian literary magazines and journals in German and Czech, unexplored by Czech literary history. Within the framework of this project, concrete magazines have been identified and the process of digitisation and uploading will start in summer 2022. Czech-German relations have been part of Petra James' theoretical concerns for years, she has published articles on the representation of German memory in Czech and more broadly Central European literature, she co-edited a collective monograph with Helga Mitterbauer (member of PHILIXTE, ULB), entitled Vorstellung vom Anderen in der tschechisch- und deutschsprachigen Literatur: Imaginationen und Interrelationen (The Representation of the Other in Czech- and German-Speaking Literature: Imaginations and Interrelations, Frank und Timme, 2021). Currently, Petra James is part of the editorial team of the major publication project, The Cultural History of Central European Avant-Gardes, coordinated by Brill-Rodopi, which aims to provide a transnational view of the region's avant-gardes. This volume follows on from Brill-Rodopi's previous work on the Nordic avant-gardes, The Cultural History of the Avant-Gardes in the Nordic Countries. Petra James directed Astrid Muls' thesis (defence January 2022; co-sponsor Pieter Lagrou) on the Belgian and French media reception of Czechoslovak dissidence in the 1970s and 1980s, and is co-directing with Pieter Lagrou Vaida Niksaite's thesis (defence 2022-2023) on the historical context of the Lithuanian national project. Petra James is the main promoter of the ARC project (2023-2028) The Artist, the Scientist and the Industrialist dedicated to the interdisciplinary study of modernisms and avant-gardes in Central Eastern Europe. In this framework she is supervising the thesis of Sybil Raysz (2022-2026) on science fiction in Bohemia and Russia as a vehicle of modernity (co-supervisor Dennis Ioffe). She will co-supervise a second thesis on the economic aspects of the structures of avant-garde literature in Central Eastern Europe (journals, publishing houses etc.) The project will be conducted in collaboration with the faculty of Solvay and the faculty of sciences of the ULB. She is also the promoter of the new research centre, MODERNITAS, at the Maison des Sciences Humaines (MSH) of the ULB, which will host from autumn 2022 interdisciplinary projects exploring the various aspects of modernity (in particular its economic and scientific aspects) in Central Eastern Europe.