contributors

Articles by Dominika V. Polanska and Grzegorz Piotrowski

1. Honoring Markus Huss

   Sadly, Markus Huss, member of the Scholarly Advisory Board and former Chair of the board, is no longer with us. Markus Huss was a muchappreciated scholar, beloved friend and colleague and is deeply missed.

2. Far-Right Europe online. A mosaic of the diversity of right-wing historical memory

   On the Digital Frontline: Far-Right Memory Work in the Baltic, Central and East European Online Spaces Andrej Kotljarchuk and Francesco Zavatti (eds.), (Visby: Eddy, 2023) Opuscula Historia Upsalensia 62 , 197 pages.

3. ADDRESSING THE ENERGY TRILEMMA IN THE BALTIC SEA REGION AND EASTERN EUROPE

   Conference name: Stocktaking of Research on Energy Security, Justice and Sustainability in The Baltic Sea Region and Eastern Europe: What Is Missing? Date and location: October 24–25, 2024, Södertörn University. Organizer: The Energy and Climate Hub at Södertörn University . Funding: Centre for Baltic and East European Studies, Södertörn University.

4. LGBTQ+ rights in Lithuania: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

   On March 11, 2025, Lithuania commemorated the 35th anniversary of the restoration of its independence. On that historic day, it became the first republic to break away from the Soviet Union. Already in 1990, it pledged commitment to democracy, international law and human rights. In 1992, these principles were enshrined in its Constitution. An important indicator of a country’s commitment to democratic values is its respect for minority rights, including the rights of sexual and gender minorities. In 2016, I published an essay in this journal on the occasion of the third Baltic Pride held in Lithuania’s capital, Vilnius. The aim of the essay was to discuss developments in the area of LGBTQ+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual, queer/questioning and others) rights after Lithuania’s accession to the European Union (EU) in 2004. Yet, as this article demonstrates, despite some progress, the reality for LGBTQ+ people in Lithuania remains complex and not quite rainbow-like.

5. Tereza Hendl on RUTA and epistemic communities in solidarity for Ukraine: “We are reclaiming debates on our societies so that they are no longer conducted about us without us”

   RUTA is an association formed by epistemic communities and solidarity networks in response to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. RUTA promotes and supports Central, South-Eastern, and Eastern European, Baltic, Caucasus, Central and Northern Asia Studies in the global conversation. Tereza Hendl is one of the founding members. In conversation with Elisa Satjukow she discusses the need to reclaim the debate, and emphasizes the decolonial forces set in motion to protect academia in the region from Russia’s violence and epistemological domination.

6. Olga Shparaga on Belarusian Academia in exile: “It is clear that something is happening in the field of education within and around Belarus”

   The repression in Belarus is targeting academia. Olga Shparaga is one of the co-founders of the European College of Liberal Arts in Minsk (ECLAB), and former lecturer at the European Humanities University (EHU), that was forcibly closed 2004 and moved into exile in Vilnius. In a conversation with Friedrich Cain, she describes how the Belarusian exile Academia, although persecuted even abroad, still works to educate Belarusian students and support teachers inside Belarus as well as in exile through various networks and strategies.

7. Theme: Universities in times of crisis and transformation POLITICAL MATERIALITIES OF STATUS-MAKING AND UNMAKING UNIVERSITIES IN THE IMPERIAL CITYSCAPE OF ST. PETERSBURG

   This article argues for the relevance of new materialist theories and onto-epistemologies in understanding the workings of political status. The issue of political status is interrogated at the confluence of the university’s status, the status of the Russian state through references to its “glorious” and “rich” history, and the materialities of the imperial cityscape of St. Petersburg. More specifically, I analyze how the spatio-temporal position of universities within the imperial cityscape of St. Petersburg plays out as a status-enhancing or undermining mechanism. The analysis in this article traverses three sites: St. Petersburg State University, St. Petersburg State Institute of Culture, and European University in St. Petersburg. The universities appear to be embedded within the imperial cityscape of St. Petersburg, which speaks to both the universities’ status and, more importantly, the idea of the state that lives in and through them, through the effects of beauty, glory, and rich history. However, while material durability allows the past to be actualized in the present, materialities are also subject to decay over time, leading to physical processes of deterioration and downgrading. This decay acts as a status undermining mechanism.

8. Theme: Universities in times of crisis and transformation Hegemony over higher education. The case of Albania

   In 2015, the Albanian government enacted a higher education reform accompanied by intense public disputes. This article employs the concept of hegemony to question: What political articulation became hegemonic in Albania’s higher education policy between 2010 and 2015, and what elements constituted such an articulation? It argues that the government’s articulation became hegemonic through its claim of establishing a regulated higher education market where all participants would compete as equals, thereby addressing all the challenges facing the sector that arose from the chaotic and tumultuous governance of the political opponent.

9. Theme: Universities in times of crisis and transformation The economic role of higher education, science, and technology in late socialist Yugoslavia

   As the economic crisis in socialist Yugoslavia escalated in the late 1970s, the role of education, science, and technology in revitalizing self-management socialism and the economy became a hotly debated issue. Just as the number of universities more than doubled during the 1970s, they started to be criticized for producing unemployable graduates who burdened the economy instead of contributing to it, and for curtailing the upward social mobility of working-class youth. The paper examines the contemporary discussions of the economic purpose of higher education and presents “technocratic” and “anti-technocratic” positions in the debate which occasionally depicted the universities as responsible for the crisis, but also as potentially uniquely suited for resolving it– and thus reversing what many commentators saw as the country’s slide towards scientific, technological, and economic dependency and peripheralization.

10. Theme Section: Universities in times of crisis and transformation Introduction. (Re)Thinking the University from, in, and beyond (Post-)Socialist Europe

    This special theme focuses on a regional context, whose academic history has so far been viewed primarily from a “Western” perspective. We argue, however, that the universities in the area that was supposed to be “integrated” after 1989 under the banner of Europeanisation have a history of their own. This history is shaped not only by different layers of imperial and national history, but above all by the shared experience of decades of socialist rule with its own ideas about the function of the university under socialism. The authors of this special theme present case studies from different universities in the socialist countries of Central, Eastern, and Southeast Europe and their successor states. It aims to critically assess concepts and practices of “university” within the scientific systems of these (post-)socialist countries on the one hand, and the reciprocal effects that have occurred in the exchange with political or economic discourses on the other.

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