Katalin Miklóssy – Head of Discipline of Eastern European Studies at the Aleksanteri Institute, University of Helsinki. Miklóssy focuses on the contemporary political history of East Central and Southeastern Europe with a special interest in the evolution of the rule of law, in-betweenness, regional development and East-West interaction during and after the Cold War. Her latest publications include the co-edited and co-authored volumes Strategic Culture in Russia’s Neighborhood: Change and Continuity in an In-Between Space (Lexington, 2019), The Politics of East European Area Studies (Routledge 2016, 2019), Competition in Socialist Society (Routledge 2014, 2017). Katalin regularly comments on Eastern European political development both in the Finnish and Nordic media. (Vilnius, Tartu and Riga courses)
Teemu Oivo – Postdoctoral researcher at the Aleksanteri Institute at the University of Helsinki and at the Karelian Institute at the University of Eastern Finland. Oivo is specialised in discursive belonging and the proliferation of problematic knowledge related to Russia and ‘Russianness’. He has studied these topics in media representations, from legacy news media to online discussion forums and nationalist websites. Currently, he works in the Flowision consortium, which focuses on the visibility of fossil and renewable energy, and waste as they traverse through society in Russia and Finland. (Riga course)
Jouni Järvinen – Director of Educational Programs (East Central European, Balkan and Baltic Studies and Ukrainian Studies) at the Aleksanteri Institute, University of Helsinki. His research and teaching interests focus on dissidents, civil society and social movements, and more recently on multifaceted relation between human and non-human animals in East Central and Southeastern Europe. (Vilnius course)
Margarita Zavadskaya – Researcher at the Aleksanteri Institute, University of Helsinki. Margarita obtained her doctoral degree from the European University Institute (Florence, Italy) majoring in the fields of political science. She had done research in the realm of democratization and elections, voting behavior, authoritarian politics and public opinion. She is currently serves as principal investigator to a research project Electoral Malpractice, Cybersecurity, and its Political Consequences in Russia and Beyond (ElMaRB). Margarita has worked at the international research projects such as Electoral Integrity Project (Universities of Harvard and Sydney), World Values Survey. Her major publications are Zavadskaya, M., & Garnett, H. A. (Eds.) (2018). Electoral Integrity and Political Regimes: Actors, Strategies and Consequences. (Routledge Studies in Elections, Democracy and Autocracy). Routledge; Sirotkina, E., & Zavadskaya, M. (2020). When the party’s over: political blame attribution under an electoral authoritarian regime. Post-Soviet Affairs, 36(1), 37-60, and Zavadskaya, M., & Rumyantseva, A. (2022). The Party of People’s Distrust: The Roots of Electoral Success of the Communists in 2021. Russian Politics, 72, 262. (Tartu course)
Deividas Šlekys is Associate professor at the Vilnius University and the Lithuanian Military Academy, where he is teaching courses on war studies. He holds MLitt. in War Studies, Glasgow University and PhD in political sciences from Vilnius University. Area of expertise and interest include: international relations history, civil-military relations, military theory and history, historical sociology. Recently published a book, Lithuanian military thought and its evolution since 1990. During 2013-2014 academic year he was a Visiting research fellow at Changing Character of War programme, Oxford University. In 2020 he was a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at Harvard University. Researcher also is involved and works closely with Lithuanian MoD and Armed Forces on projects related to professional military education, doctrinal development. He is also known as one of the major public commentators on the defence issues in Lithuanian. (Riga course)
Violeta Davoliūtė – Professor at the Institute of International Relations and Political Science, Vilnius University. Recently, she was a fellow at the Imre Kertész Kolleg Jena (2018-2019) and associate research scholar at Yale (2015-2016). Violeta completed her Ph.D. at the University of Toronto and is the author of The Making and Breaking of Soviet Lithuania: Memory and Modernity in the Wake of War (2014). Being a specialist in matters of historical trauma, the politics of memory and national identity, she has co-edited three volumes and has published articles in Ab Imperio, Osteuropa, Ethnologie Française, Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas, the Journal of Baltic Studies, Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema, East European Jewish Affairs, Politologija and others. (Vilnius course)
Jogilė Ulinskaitė – Assistant and Researcher at the Institute of International Relations and Political Science, Vilnius University. In 2018, she defended her doctoral thesis on populism in Lithuania. Since 2012 she has been involved in research projects on the collective memory of the communist past in Lithuania and currently leads a project “Post-communist Transformation as Dismantling of the Soviet Modernity Project”. (Vilnius course)
Valda Budreckaitė – Ph.D. Student at Vilnius University, Institute of International Relations and Political Science. A preliminary topic of Valda’s dissertation is “The Post-Soviet Period in Lithuania as a Cultural Trauma: Experiences of Sociopolitical Transformations and Their Reflections in Political Attitudes of the Residents of Lithuania”. Her main research interests include post-socialist transformation, collective memory and cultural trauma. She is also interested in diaspora studies. (Vilnius and Tartu courses)
Inna Šteinbuka – Professor, Director of Master´s Programme “European Studies and Economic Diplomacy”. Šteinbuka is also a special advisor to executive vice-president of the European Commission Valdis Dombrovskis. She is a full member of the Latvian Academy of Sciences (LAS) and chair of the Board of the LAS Institute of European Policy Research. Since 2005 she served at the European Commission (EC) as head of the EC Representation in Rīga and director at Eurostat. Inna focuses on the multidisciplinary issues of European policy with a special interest in macroeconomic and fiscal policies. Her latest publications include the co-edited and co-authored reviewed monograph 15<30<100 = Latvia’s European Way with Žaneta Ozoliņa and the chapter “Economic Consequences of Populism” with Yinglu Xu. [https://www.bvef.lu.lv/en/conf/2020-economic-inequality-and-well-being/]. (Vilnius, Tartu, and Riga courses)
Žaneta Ozoliņa – Professor of International Relations at the University of Latvia and Senior Researcher at the Advanced Social and Political Research Institute. She focuses on regional cooperation in the Baltic Sea Region, European integration and Transatlantic security with special interest in European Neighbourhood policy as well as relations with Eastern Partnership countries and Russia. Her latest publications include the edited volumes Gender and Human Security: A View from the Baltic Sea Region (2015), Societal Security: Inclusion-Exclusion Dilemma. A Portrait of Russian-Speaking Community in Latvia (2016) and Stratcom Laughs. In Search of an Analytical Framework (2017). Žaneta is also the chairwoman of the Latvian Transatlantic Organisation. (Vilnius and Tartu courses)
Andrey Makarychev – Professor of Regional Political Studies at Johan Skytte Institute of Political Science, University of Tartu. He was also guest professor at Center for Global Politics, Free University in Berlin and senior associate with CIDOB think tank in Barcelona. His previous institutional affiliations included George Mason University (US), Center for Security Studies and Conflict Research (ETH Zurich), and the Danish Institute of International Studies. Andrey teaches courses on globalization, political systems in post-Soviet Eurasia, EU-Russia relations, regionalism and integration in the post-Soviet area and visual politics. His research interests include foreign policy and international relations, global and regional studies, culture and politics. (Vilnius, Tartu, and Riga courses)
Alexandra Yatsyk – Researcher at Free Russia Foundation and the University of Tartu. Her areas of expertise are identity-making in post-Soviet countries and Eastern Europe, post-Soviet nation building, Russian influence in Europe, sports and cultural mega-events, as well as biopolitics and art. She is the author of articles and books, including the recently co-authored monographs Critical Biopolitics of the Post-Soviet: From Population to Nation (Lexington, 2019) and Lotman’s Cultural Semiotics and the Political (Rowman & Littlefield International, 2017), both with Andrey Makarychev. Alexandra is also the author of co-edited volumes such as Mega-Events in Post-Soviet Eurasia: Shifting Borderlines of Inclusion and Exclusion (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), New and Old Vocabularies of International Relations After the Ukraine Crisis (Routledge, 2016), and Boris Nemtsov and Russian Politics: Power and Resistance (Ibidem Verlag & Columbia University, 2018), all with Andrey Makarychev. (Vilnius, Tartu, and Riga courses)