Martin Furmanik & Miroslav Števík

PhDr. Martin Furmanik, PhD. (1989) was born in Žilina. After studying at the Janko Francisci Rimavský Grammar School in Levoča, he completed a master’s degree at the Department of History, Faculty of Arts, Matej Bel University in Banská Bystrica. He subsequently pursued doctoral studies at the Institute of Social Sciences of the Slovak Academy of Sciences in Košice. He successfully completed his PhD in Slovak History in 2016. Since then, he has worked at the Spiš Museum in Spišská Nová Ves. His research focuses on the history of Spiš in the 20th century, with particular emphasis on the period of the First Czechoslovak Republic and issues concerning national minorities. He has published around thirty scholarly and academic studies and more than 100 popular-history articles. He has co-authored several monographs on municipalities in the Spiš region. He is the author of the monograph Spiš a vznik Československej republiky (Spiš and the Formation of the Czechoslovak Republic) and the author or co-author of several other scholarly and popular publications. He also writes fiction.

Mgr. Miroslav Števík (1965) was born in Čadca and completed his secondary education at the Secondary Pedagogical School in Seč, in the Chrudim District. From 1987 to 1992, he studied history and geography at the Faculty of Education of Matej Bel University. From 1997 to 2012, he worked as a historian at the Ľubovňa Museum in Stará Ľubovňa, and since 2012 he has worked at the Spiš Museum in Spišská Nová Ves. He has organized international academic conferences and edited conference proceedings, including K stredovekým dejinám Spiša (2003), K dejinám Podolínca a novovekého Spiša (2006), Spiš v 12. a 13. storočí (2011), and Pocta Ivanovi Chalupeckému (2012). From 2007 to 2012, he was editor-in-chief of the Sandecko-Spišské zošity journal, and from 2011 to 2015 he was a member of the programme board of the Almanach Muszyny. Since 2012, he has edited the social-sciences section of the regional-studies yearbook Spiš. His research focuses on the development of settlement and historical geography, particularly in the Spiš region.

Martin Furmanik and Miroslav Števík have jointly published several popular and scholarly books on the history of Spiš. These include the collective monographs Dejiny Rusínov na Spiši (History of the Rusyns in Spiš) and Dejiny Nemcov na Spiši (History of the Germans in Spiš), the catalogues Spišská župa (12. storočie – 1922) (Spiš County, 12th Century – 1922) and Minorities in Spiš, and the book series Putovanie dejinami Spiša (Journey Through the History of Spiš), which currently consists of six volumes. The book Dejiny Nemcov na Spiši won first place in the 2023 Book of the Prešov Self-Governing Region competition and received the Literary Fund Prize for 2023.