Research interests

• Material culture and consumption
• Paid domestic work and childcare; au pairs
• Gender and reproductive labour
• Motherhood and childcare

Summary of research

I am interested in social life of things – the ways how people use things to create social relations and cultural meanings. My interest in material culture and consumption started with my PhD research, focused on small village shops in Northern Slovakia. Later, during the fieldwork on Slovak au pairs living in London, I studied how au pairs and their hosts use material objects and space (especially furnishing, decorations and usage of au pair rooms) to negotiate their relationships within an intimate space of home.
Currently I use my fascination by material in teaching. I teach undergraduate students of social anthropology courses on material culture, economic anthropology, and consumption and consumer society as well as graduate students of sociology course on social lives of things.
For more than a decade I have been studying and writing about paid domestic work and childcare.
During the years 2004 and 2005 I spent a year doing participant observation and interviews with Slovak au pairs living and working in London. I have studied au pair stays as a temporary youth migration, as a type of paid domestic work and as a generational experience of young women from Slovakia. Together with Professor Daniel Miller, who interviewed host families having Slovak au pairs, we wrote the book Au pair published by Polity in 2010. The Czech translation of the Au pair was published by Slon in 2013. The project was funded by The Leverhulme Trust Research Project Grant.
Since the year 2013 I do research on paid domestic work and childcare in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. I examine social and cultural context of employment of paid domestic workers and relationships involved in paid domestic work. These questions will be addressed in my next book on paid domestic work in Slovakia: Panie k deťom a na upratovanie: podoby platenej ženskej práce v domácnosti. The project has been funded by GAČR Project 13-11062P.
I love working with various styles of academic writing, examining ways how lives and experiences of people can be told through ethnography.

Selected publications

Books:

• Búriková, Z. a Miller, D. Au Pair. Polity Press. 2010. V českej verzii Slon 2013.

Book chapters:

• Sekeráková Búriková, Z. 2015. „‘Good families’ and the shadows of servitude: au pair gossip and norms of au pair employment“ in Cox, R. (ed.), Au pairs’ Lives in Global Context: Sisters or Servants. Houndmills Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. 36-52.
• Sekeráková Búriková, Z. 2014. "Earning money, learning the language: Slovak au pairs and their passage to adulthood" in Makovicky, N. (ed.), Neoliberalism, Personhood, and Postsocialism: Enterprising Selves in Changing Economies. Farnham: Ashate. 145-161.
• Búriková, Z. 2011. „Consumerism in Slovak Catholic Homes“ in Soper, K., and Thomas, L. (eds.), Religion, Consumerism and Sustainability: Paradise Lost? Houndmills Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. pp. 137-151.

Journal articles:

• Búriková, Z. Motivácie au pair migrácie zo Slovenska. Slovenský Národopis, 2007, roč. 56, č. 4, pp. 442 - 456.
• Búriková, Z. Spotreba a výskum reálne existujúceho socializmu. In Etnologické rozpravy, roč. 13, 2006, č. 2, pp. 81 - 91 .
• Búriková, Z. Prečo majú britské matky au pair a čo sa na tom slovenským au pair nepáči. Slovenský národopis, roč. 54, 2006, č. 4, pp. 341 – 356.
• Búriková, Z. The Embarrassment of Co-presence: Au pairs and Their Rooms. Home Cultures, Volume 3, Issue 2, 2006, pp. 1 - 24.
• Búriková, Z. ’Christian’ Shops: Morality and Commerce in the Slovak Village. Anthropological Journal on European Cultures. Communities in Transformation. Central and Eastern Europe 12, 2003, pp. 187 - 203.