She graduated from the Faculty of Arts at Masaryk University in Brno with degrees in Czech language and literature and art history. Her doctoral thesis, defended in 2022, focused on the role of literature in the modern system of interwar Baťa’s Zlín in former Czechoslovakia and was written within a joint programme of the Faculty of Arts at Masaryk University and the Institute for Czech Literature of the Czech Academy of Sciences. In addition to the Baťa phenomenon, she focuses on literature and visual art of the first half of the 20th century, word–image relations, book culture, and graphic design.

Within the MODERNITAS Centre, she works on a postdoctoral project mapping the relationship between the spheres of literature and culture and those of industry, business, and entrepreneurship. In 2025, she was awarded a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Postdoctoral Fellowship for her project “Literature – Industry – Society between Colonialism and Globalisation: The Role of Literature and the Corporate Press in the Global Activities of the Baťa Concern.”

Contact : barbora.svobodova@ulb.be