She is currently a postdoctoral research fellow at the Institute of Ethnology at Czech Academy of Sciences, within the ERC-funded MEMPOP project. Her work focuses on memory politics and cultural heritage in the context of economic and social crisis, and war, and the political economy of culture work. She is a member of the Invisible University for Ukraine initiative at the Central European University.

Diána obtained her MA (2013) and PhD (2020) degrees at Durham University. She was a guest researcher at the Center in 2015-2016, and a junior researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology between 2014-2018. She was an external affiliate at Vienna University at the Doktoratskolleg Galizien between 2017-2019. After her PhD, she taught public anthropology at University College London, and held postdoctoral positions at the University of St. Andrews and the University of Stirling.

She has been involved in applied heritage projects like Open Heritage, and in cataloguing Jewish heritage sites with UAV-driven 3D-modelling across Eastern Europe for the European Jewish Cemeteries Initiative. She worked as a consultant for the British Council, and as a researcher for the Metropolitan Research Institute in Budapest. 

In cooperation with the Center for Urban History, Diána was involved in the 24.02.22, 5 am: Testimonies from the War project, convening a seminar series and the accompanying podcast, conducting empirical research and offering research support. After the full-scale invasion, she focused on international support for the Ukrainian heritage sector. She is working on a book project about working with difficult pasts in Lviv and Ukraine, from Ukraine's independence through revolutions and war, using heritage as a main lens. 

In addition to her social and applied research work, Diána is a published author and literary translator. Her debut collection won Hungary's Margó Award in 2022, and she was a literature fellow at the Berlin Art Academy in 2023-2024.

Research interests: critical heritage, urban change, state transformation, empire, soft power, historical anthropology.