Jana Laslavíková

Mgr. Jana Laslavíková, PhD., is a Slovak musicologist and educator. She studied musicology at the Faculty of Arts of Comenius University in Bratislava and earned her PhD in 2008 with a dissertation titled The Mestské divadlo v Prešporku v rokoch 1886 - 1920 (Municipal Theatre in Pressburg from 1886 to 1920). As part of her postdoctoral studies, she completed four-month research stays at the Institute of Culture Studies and Theatre History of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in 2017 and 2019. After completing her studies, she worked for several years in the field of basic art education as an accompanist, piano teacher, and deputy director. Since 2015, she has been a researcher at the Slovak Academy of Sciences—initially at the Institute of Musicology and currently at the Institute of History. Jana Laslavíková focuses her research primarily on theatre and cultural life in Central and Eastern Europe during the long 19th century, in the context of political, social, and national changes in urban environments.

As principal investigator, Jana Laslavíková participated in two international research projects supported by the Visegrad Fund: The Network of the Musical Theatre Companies in the Multilingual East-Central Europe (2017–2018) and Towards a Common Regional History of Our Nation Building Strategies. Traveling Directors, Musicians (2020–2022).

In 2022, in collaboration with art historian Jana Luková, she identified the original ceiling decoration of the auditorium of the Municipal Theatre in Pressburg (today the historical building of the Slovak National Theatre in Bratislava), which had long been considered lost. In 2023, she examined the family correspondence of conductor Bruno Walter from the period of his stay in Pressburg in the late 19th century, found in the estate of Ivan Balla. Both discoveries were presented to the professional and general public in 2024 at an international workshop and exhibition in cooperation with the Slovak National Museum – Music Museum in Bratislava.

Jana Laslavíková is the author of the monographs: Mestské divadlo v Prešporku na sklonku 19. storočia : medzi provinciou a metropolou  (The Municipal Theatre in Pressburg at the Turn of the 19th Century: Between Province and Metropolis, 2020) and Mestské divadlo v Prešporku (1886 – 1899) v kontexte dobovej divadelnej praxe (The Municipal Theatre in Pressburg (1886–1899) in the Context of Contemporary Theatrical Practice, 2018). She also contributed the chapters Hudba v mestskom divadle (Music in the Municipal Theatre) and Šľachtické hudobné divadlo (Aristocratic Musical Theatre, co-authored with Eva Szóradová) to the comprehensive publication Hudobné dejiny Bratislavy. Od stredoveku do roku 1918 (Musical History of Bratislava: From the Middle Ages to 1918, Jana Bartová-Kalinayová et al., 2020).

She regularly participates in academic conferences and publishes in both Slovak and international scholarly journals. Since 2014, she has also been working as an educational program coordinator for children, youth, and adults at the Ister Cultural and Educational Center in Bratislava.