LIMINAL research centre opens at the Czech Technical University in Prague
The new LIMINAL centre at CIIRC CTU explores how understanding the past can help us prepare for the future. It examines what motivates people, how they learn and how societies respond to change. It aims to apply these insights to technology design, education and efforts to strengthen societal resilience. The centre will be introduced to the public on 25 September 2026.
“When introducing AI into companies, for example, we keep finding that people still matter most. What motivates them, whom they trust and how they learn. Understanding how people navigated change in the past helps us think more clearly about the changes still to come,” says Sara Polak, founder of LIMINAL.
Archaeology and anthropology form the centre’s theoretical foundations, connecting with a range of other disciplines. LIMINAL aims to strengthen their role in education and in understanding and shaping our technological world. It also studies informal systems: the unwritten rules, relationships of trust and customs that guide how people actually behave. Its approach draws on complexity science, which examines how interactions between people, institutions and their environments give rise to broader social change.
The name refers to liminality, an anthropological concept describing the transitional state between what someone is leaving behind and what they are about to enter. LIMINAL applies this perspective to societal change: periods when existing rules are no longer sufficient and new ones are still taking shape.
Past forward! Making cultural heritage a societal priority and accessible to more people
The centre’s first priority is LIMINAL Heritage. Its Cabinet of Memories programme offers museums, libraries, galleries and heritage sites a Heritage Audit and opportunities to collaborate on digital twins for managing buildings and estates, searchable collections, conversational guides and avatars, exhibitions and games. Institutions can join a shared visitor network and work with the centre to explore support available through CIIRC CTU, including EDIH services where eligibility requirements are met.
The centre also aims to make cultural heritage more accessible to disadvantaged groups and reduce barriers related to income, health or social background. The more people become “culturally literate” and enjoy engaging with culture, the more widely we, as a society, can learn from the stories of our ancestors. Also, it’s fun.
As one of its main activities for 2027, LIMINAL is preparing to return to Guatemala in collaboration with Professor Milan Kováč, on an expedition to the lost Maya city of Los Abuelos. Through the project, LIMINAL aims to develop the concept of Playable Archaeology, using a digital twin to connect field research and heritage conservation with games and interactive ways of exploring the past. This will include state-of-the-art LiDAR equipment, generously provided by DJI Telink, for mapping and analysing the terrain.
Open to businesses, researchers and the public
LIMINAL is expanding its partner network and invites businesses, academics and members of the public to collaborate.
LIMINAL Business examines how companies manage change, share knowledge and involve employees in adopting new technologies. Together with Konica Minolta, it is developing the Resilience Academy, an educational programme focusing on skills including critical thinking, judgement and collaboration.
LIMINAL AI explores how people use AI, under what circumstances they trust it and how they can retain control over their own data and decisions. Some LIMINAL members also work at Bottlecap AI, where they contribute to the development of its AI Scan project. In collaboration with the Czech AI Factory programme, a community AI Hub and an educational AI Campus are being established at CIIRC CTU to support knowledge sharing and education in AI.
LIMINAL Community studies how human communities function, including how people agree on rules, cooperate and make decisions about shared concerns. Together with its partner Davinci.space and academic adviser Robin Dunbar, it aims to apply these insights to developing tools that help people build robust communities.
LIMINAL Communications brings research to wider audiences through talks, exhibitions and podcasts. It also develops citizen science initiatives that involve the public in research. With Good Company Circle, for example, it has produced the miniseries Seven Sins of Good Society, exploring human motivations and social norms.
LIMINAL’s principal partners are the University of Oxford (St Hugh’s College and the School of Archaeology) and Bletchley Park.
Other partners and collaborators include Skull Studio, Alquist AI, Promethist AI, Karel Pavelka Jr and his team, Radek Richtr and SAGE Lab, TELINK, the Czech Academy of Sciences, Oxford Archaeology, the Council for British Archaeology, the family of Kinsky dal Borgo, House of Lobkowicz, the Regional Museum in Olomouc and the Museum of Prague. The centre welcomes further museums, libraries, galleries and other cultural institutions, researchers and technology partners to join collaborative projects.
Room for curiosity, play, and humour
The centre’s logo was drawn by Sara Polak’s child. At a time when we try to optimise almost everything, it invites us to ask where we should look for what truly matters. In relationships, humour, curiosity or the pleasure of working together? These are also questions LIMINAL wants to explore, partly by creating an environment where people enjoy doing research. Activities will include board games, pub quizzes, Dungeons & Dragons and live-action role-playing games.
The centre is making arrangements for PhD supervision and is reviewing its first applications. Its conference on 25 September 2027 will focus on humour and memetics—the spread and transformation of ideas—and how these phenomena help societies navigate change and adopt technologies.
Opening on 25 September and a message to future researchers
The opening will take place on 25 September 2026, from 15:00 to 17:30, at the CIIRC CTU Penthouse, Jugoslávských partyzánů 1580/3, Prague 6. Guests will include Peter Mitchell and William Kelley from the University of Oxford, and Iain Standen from Bletchley Park. An archaeology pub quiz will follow at 19:00 in the RICAIP Testbed, as part of Researchers’ Night.
The winners will help seal a time capsule, which will be held in the Museum of Prague’s depository for one hundred years. It is due to be opened on 25 September 2126. For future archaeologists and anthropologists, it will preserve a record of what we expected from AI, what we feared and how we experienced this period.
