"One of the panel members made everybody chuckle during the interview when he said that I had cleverly designed a project on the joys of what most of us do most of the day," says Anežka Kuzmičová. She has won a prestigious ERC Starting Grant.

Charles University recently launched its new discovery service, UKAŽ, facilitating the simultaneous and smooth search of printed, digitised and electronic resources. The system was a complete redesign of its forerunner, integrating the catalogues of more than 60 CU libraries. Searching for books has never been more convenient.

As a little girl, Lucie Korecká received a copy of The Hobbit and was enchanted by J.R.R. Tolkien’s world, explored further in fantastic detail in The Lord of the Rings. The work was influenced by Icelandic and Norse mythology and later Korecká pursued her passion for Old Norse at the Faculty of Arts, where she is completing her PhD.

Winning the “Book of the Year” award in one of Europe’s largest countries is a major success, not just for the author but for Czech culture as a whole. When it happens twice in a row, it speaks to something more: obsession, in a positive sense. That is the kind of success scientist Stanislav Komárek has enjoyed in Ukraine.

Martin Hilský is one of the country’s most prominent translators of Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets into Czech. In 2011, his translations were published in a single volume The Complete Works (Dílo). Now, Academia has followed up with Shakespeare’s England: Portrait of an Age.