Published | Parrésia - Ročenka pro východní křesťanství

PhDr. Pavel Mikeš (b. 1960) is a Czech Africanist and Orientalist. In 1979–1984 he was a  student in African and Oriental Studies at the Philosophical Faculty of the Charles University in Prague. He subsequently worked at the Oriental Institute in Prague. Since 1999 he has been working as a diplomat at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic, and also for the European Union.   At the same time, he lectures for a variety of African and European institutions. He is concerned with questions of security and the co-existence of various cultures, and with the political and economic integration of the African continent.

PhDr. Zdeněk Poláček, CSc. (b. 1944) is a Czech specialist in Ethiopian studies and an orientalist. In  1961–1962 he studied the history of philosophy and geography at the Philosophical Faculty of the J. E. Purkyně University in Brno, subsequently studying Amharic philology and English at the Faculty of Oriental Studies of the Leningrad State University (1963–1966), and at the Haile Sellassie I University in Addis Abeba (1968–1969). He completed his studies at the Charles University Philosophical Faculty in Prague in 1969 (Ethiopian studies). In 1973 he was awarded the research degree CSc. He worked at the Oriental Institute of the Academy Sciences of the Czech Republic (1973–1995). He has specialised in Ethiopian studies, with a particular emphasis on the lexicography, lexicology and grammar of the Amharic language. In the years 1986–1990 he worked at the Academy of Ethiopian languaages in Addis Abeba and the period 1995–2006 at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic, serving as the Czech ambassador in Ethiopia (1996–2001) and Saudi Arabia (2002–2006).