Zora Mintalová – Zubercová

Dr. Zora Mintalová - Zubercová (born 1950 in Martin, Czechoslovakia) is a Slovakian ethnographer, historian and museologist, specializing in the fields of Food History and Material culture of Central Europe. Dr. Mintalová - Zubercová, together with her colleagues from the Ethnological Institute at the Slovak Academy of Sciences, is a recipient of the 1991 National Medal of Science of the Slovak Republic, for the work Etnografický Atlas Slovenska, which was in 1994 made into a documentary film. She is also the founder of the Slovak Red Cross Museum.

Dr. Zora Mintalová - Zubercová is married and has a son.

Mintalová-Zubercová graduated in 1974 from the Faculty of Arts at the Comenius University in Bratislava earning a Prom. Etnograf degree in Ethnography and History. She then started working the same year as a Research Assistant at the Ethnographic Institute of the Slovak National Museum. After earning her PhDr. in Ethnography and History in 1980 from the Comenius University in Bratislava, she was promoted to a Research Scientist.

Because of her mother’s gentry background, she was not allowed to hold any major scientific positions during the socialist era in Czechoslovakia. After the Velvet revolution of 1989, and the fall of the Communist party, she became a Senior Scientist and in 1990 the head of the main Scientific-Research department of the Slovak National Museum. This led to her scientific co-operation with many regional, national and international scientific organizations as the Slovak Academy of Sciences; State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg; Musée national des Arts et Traditions Populaires Paris - department of Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle; Museo Nazionale delle Arti e Tradizioni Popolari in Rome - Italy etc. During her career at the Slovak National Museum she participated in more than 29 international and national Scientific-research tasks as a Principal Investigator an Co-Investigator, and curatored and co-authored more than 50 museum exhibitions in Slovakia and abroad including Cuba, Netherlands, Germany, Italy etc.

From 1996 to 2000, she also served as the Vice director of the Slovak National Museum in Martin. In the year 2000, she was entrusted by the Supreme Body of the Slovak Red Cross to found the Slovak Red Cross Museum. Two years later she was appointed to serve as the first director of the newly established museum.

Dr. Mintalová-Zubercová retired from her active scientific career in 2009, but still continues to work in the field of food history research; publishing books and articles on this theme.

Currently, she serves on the board of National Culture of the Slovak Republic.

• Award of the Slovak ethnographic society at the Slovak Academy of Sciences in the category exhibitions for „Z kuchyne starých matiek“, 1987
• Ciechanów Voivodeship Medal of Merit, Ciechanów - Poland, 1987
• National Medal of Science of the Slovak Republic, 1991,(member of the scientific team);
• Slovak Academy of Sciences award for scientific-research, 1995, (member of the scientific team);
• Giuseppe Pitré-Salvatore Salomone Marino International award for ethnological and anthropological studies, Palermo-Italy, 1995, for „Encyklopédia ľudovej kultúry Slovenska (member of the group of authors)
• Award of the Slovak Museum Association for the development of Slovak museology, 1981 and 2000
• Slovak National Museum medal for the development of museology, 2000
• Commemorative medal of the Slovak Red Cross, 2009
• Best Culinary History Book in Slovakia (Gourmand World Cookbook Award), 2012

During her career Dr. Mintalová - Zubecová authored and co-authored more than 13 monographs, and published more than 250 scientific papers in the fields of History and Ethnology mainly focusing on material culture.

Selection:

• Z ľudovej kultúry Turca, ISBN 80-7090-760-6 (co-author, editor)
• Red Cross in Slovakia in the years 1919-1938, ISBN 80-969221-9-X.
• Red Cross in Slovakia in the years 1939-1947, ISBN 80-89208-03-7.
• Z turčianskej kuchyne, ISBN 978-80-89208-64-7
• Veľká kniha slovenských Vianoc, ISBN 978-80-89208-92-0
• Všetko okolo stola I., ISBN 978-80-89208-94-4
• Všetko okolo stola II., ISBN 978-80-81150-13-5
• Vianoce na Slovensku, ISBN 978-80-556-0444-2