Interviews

“One must do one’s best to undermine the system”

Tomas Venclova in a conversation with Stefan Ingvarsson on literature, Lithuania, and being a historical optimist in Europe today.

By Stefan Ingvarsson November 21, 2019

Putin 4.0. Post-Crimea elite conflicts and the future transition of presidential power in Russia

Professor Olga Kryshtanovskaya comments on the current situation around the future presidential successor in Russia and the potential political upheavals connected to this issue. Olga Kryshtanovskaya is a professor at the State University of Management in Moscow and a leading Russian sociologist with a specialization in elite research

By Ilja Viktorov March 7, 2019

“FEMACT is led by an ethos of feminism-across-borders”

The academic community is international, and this solidarity crosses borders. Angelika Sjöstedt-Landén is one of the founders of the network FEMACT, that aim to fight the limiting space for academic freedom. We asked her to explain more about the initiative.

By Ninna Mörner March 6, 2019

“There is a global crisis of attacks on higher education”

Scholars at Risk (SAR) is an international network of institutions and individuals whose mission it is to protect scholars and promote academic freedom. We ask five questions to Lauren Crain, Director of Research and Learning at Scholars at Risk.

By Ninna Mörner March 5, 2019

“I was not prepared to censor myself” Interview with Russian university professor Gleb Yarovoy

Gleb Yarovoy is a professor of political science and is currently based at the University of Eastern Finland in Joensuu. His dealings over the years with his former main employer, Petrozavodsk State University, says something about the situation for Russian academics of today.

By Påhl Ruin March 5, 2019

“Being a part of the community that is being investigated creates a number of complications”

Corina Ceamă, Ion Duminică, Ian Hancock, Tomasz Koper, and Hristo Kyuchukov reflect on their views and aspirations for Romani Studies, as well as their own roles as Roma scholars.

By Kimmo Granqvist September 6, 2018

”Is it the swan song of patriarchy, or the beginning of a new ice age?” Interview with Agnieszka Graff and Elżbieta Korolczuk

Agnieszka Graff and Elżbieta Korolczuk in an interview about the phenomenon of anti-genderism: a topic they written together on and both try to understand as it is spreading in Poland but also widely elsewhere

By Eva Karlberg March 7, 2018

Muted histories and reunited memories a story of a Swedish family during the times of the Russian Revolution

Early this fall Irina Seits, Russian PhD candidate at CBEES, Södertörn University met with Gustaf Nobel, Ludvig’s great-grandson, in order to talk about the Russian period in the life of his prominent family.

By Irina Seits November 7, 2017

A discussion on the Bakhtin Circle

Paromita Chakrabarti and Yulia Gradskova discuss the Bakhtin Circle with five experts in the field: Caryl Emerson, university professor emeritus of Slavic languages and literatures, Princeton University; Lakshmi Bandlamudi, professor of psychology at LaGuardia Community College, City University of New York; Ken Hirschkop, professor of English at the University of Waterloo, Ontario; Craig Brandist, professor of cultural theory and intellectual history and director of the Bakhtin Centre, at the University of Sheffield; and Galin Tihanov, the George Steiner professor of comparative literature at Queen Mary University of London.

By Paromita Chakrabarti June 19, 2017

“Good literature is like lightning: it has to shock, to pierce the heart”

In this interview, Laura Sintija Černiauskaitė shares her experience of becoming a writer in the post-Soviet conditions of 1990s Lithuania. Her development as a writer coincided with a drastic change in what it meant to be a writer: from being a political spokesperson to being an economic entity.

By Stephan Collishaw January 30, 2017