Jan Macháček

Chairman of the Board of Trustees, Institute for Politics and Society (Czech Republic)

Jan Macháček is a Czech journalist and musician, working as a commentator and analyst for the daily newspaper Lidové noviny. Before, he worked for Hospodářské noviny and Respekt, the latter of which he co-founded after the velvet revolution (1989) as the country‘s first independent media outlet. His main field of interest is Political Economics, namely the Eurozone Crisis and European integration. He writes for his daily online blog, Monitor, and provides analysis for Czech Radio and Television. With his lectures, he visits international conferences and universities. He teaches journalism at New York University in Prague. During the Communist era, he was a vocal dissent of the Czechoslovak regime and signed the human rights petition Charta 77. He was involved in samizdat publishing and underground music culture. He is currently the Chairman of the Board of Trustees at the Institute for Politics and Society and formerly, he was the Chairman of the Board of Trustees at the Václav Havel Library. He has been repeatedly awarded as the best journalist in the country (for instance, he received the Ferdinand Peroutka Award in 2010).