A scholarly journal from the Centre for Baltic and East European Studies (CBEES) Södertörn University, Stockholm.
Issue 2026, 1: Download.
Full Professor in Political Science and a Project Researcher at CBEES, Södertörn University.
Kristian Gerner (b. 1942), esteemed historian and emeritus professor of history at Lund University, passed away on April 2, 2026, in Lund, Sweden, at the age of 83. His voice in Sweden’s public and academic life will be greatly missed.
Alesia Rudnik is a political scientist based in Sweden, originally from Belarus. Her research has been published in journals such as Europe-Asia Studies, Communist and Post-Communist Studies, Media, War & Conflict and Internet Policy Review. She is also a regular contributor to Baltic Worlds (see for example the co-authored article with Malin Rönnblom in BW, vol. 17, no. 4, 2024). She currently serves as the Director of the Center for New Ideas, an independent Belarusian think tank operating in exile. She previously led a Belarusian diaspora organization in Sweden and was awarded “European of the Year 2022” in Sweden for her civic engagement. Rudnik’s academic work focuses on the relationship between people and technology in the context of political protests under authoritarian regimes. On September 12, 2025, she defended her doctoral dissertation in political science at Karlstad University, titled Machinery of Dissent: People and Technology in Political Protests in Autocracies. In conversation with Baltic Worlds, Dr. Rudnik reflects on research in Sweden concerning Belarus, the 2020 Belarusian protests, and the role of digital platforms in mobilizing protest movements within authoritarian contexts.
At this year’s CBEES Annual Conference (November 28–29, 2024, at S.dertörn University), Ninna Mörner (Baltic Worlds) and Joakim Ekman (CBEES) organized a roundtable discussion on academic journals with a focus on the Baltic Sea region and Eastern Europe.
Drawing on in-depth interviews, this essay investigates professional strategies and researcher identity constructions in the precarious postdoctoral phase. The analysis indicates that most of the informants in the present study seem to be somewhere in the middle of the process of establishing a postdoctoral/early-career identity. The essay underlines the need for better preparing PhD students for the postdoctoral phase; and suggests that to most of the informants, the emerging researcher identities are secondary to more pressing issues, relating to survival in academia alltogether.
This is a presentation of three original public opinion surveys covering the Baltic states, that were recently released in the public domain. All three surveys have been designed specifically to tap the political culture of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, including the Russian-speaking poulation groups and other domestic ethnic minorities.
On May 16 2024, a workshop was organised at the Centre for Baltic and East European Studies (CBEES), Södertörn University, that included presentations on geopolitical orientations in the Baltic states, Central and Eastern Europe, and the Caucasus.
Analyzing Competitive Victimhood: Narratives of Recognition and Non-recognition in the Pursuit of Reconciliation, Çağla Demirel, (Doctoral dissertation: Södertörn University, School of Social Sciences, 2023). 187 pages
Current research tell us that we are presently facing a global wave of autocratization. Gradual declines of democratic attributes characaterize political regimes worldwide. Technology opens up for democratic interaction, but also makes it easy to spread fake news. Freedom of expression is in peril. Universities all around the world encounter repression of academic freedom. To discuss these and other challenges, Linnaeus University (in Växjö) organized a digital conference on A Questioned Democracy, on November 15, 2023.
On November 7-8, 2023, Baltic University Programme organized the BUP Symposium, an annual online event to discuss different aspects of ongoing research on sustainable development in the Baltic Sea region.
Shortly after the outbreak of the war (the full-scale Russian attack on February 24, 2022), the European Commission set up a fellowship scheme (called MSCA4Ukraine) to provide support to displaced researchers from Ukraine.