In May 2023 students of ethnology and cultural anthropology (Charles University, Prague) spent a week in Broumov in northeastern Bohemia focusing on various aspects of depopulation and the transmission of cultural heritage. The town of Broumov and the adjacent villages have become one of the field sites for the HerInDep research group.
HerInDep researchers focus on the process of depopulation of the region in the last decades, as well as the expulsion of the original German population after the Second World War. The main research question is how the local cultural heritage (mainly the centuries long tradition of textile industry) survived the population changes of the 20th century.
Students, accommodated in the Broumov monastery, worked in groups both in the town of Broumov and in adjacent villages. Under the supervision of Assoc. Prof. Lenka Jakoubková Budilová (Charles University, Prague), they focused on various research areas such as the consequences of depopulation for the local communities, lifestyle migration or the dis/continuities of the local cultural heritage.
