Baltic Ways FPRI Eurasia Program

What did commemoration of the dead look like in Medieval Livonia and how did memoria shape group identities in the region? Dr. Gustavs Strenga shares insights into his research and parallels with modern-day memory wars. 
Baltic Ways is a podcast brought to you by the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies, produced in partnership with the Baltic Initiative at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of AABS or FPRI.
Read more:
Remembering the Dead: Collective Memory and Commemoration in Late Medieval Livonia 
Transcript
Indra Ekmanis: Hello, and welcome to Baltic Ways, a podcast bringing you interviews and insights from the world of Baltic studies.
I'm your host Indra Ekmanis, and today we're speaking with Gustavs Strenga, senior researcher at the Institute of Arts and Cultural Studies at the Latvian Academy of Culture and recently a postdoctoral researcher at the University of In Germany. Today, he speaks with us about his recent book, Remembering the Dead: Collective Memory and Commemoration in Late Medieval Livonia, and what parallels that might have for us today in the modern Baltic states. Stay tuned.
Dr. Gustavs Strenga, thank you so much for joining us on Baltic Ways. Perhaps we can start, you can tell us a little bit about your background and how you came into this field of study.
Gustavs Strenga: First of all, thank you for inviting me. Well, my background is I'm Latvian. I was born in Riga and I began my studies in Riga, in Latvia, and I studied history at the University of Latvia. And since high school, I had an interest in the history of the Catholic Church, partially because I went to a Catholic school. And during my studies, when I began studying at the end of the last century, beginning of this century, I understood that I'm interested into medieval history. I wrote my bachelor thesis and also later my MA about Dominicans. It's a mendicant order founded in the 13th century and they also had their priories in the Baltics, like in Riga and Tallinn. I spent, during my studies, a year in Lublin at the Catholic University of Lublin. I had a wonderful Erasmus semester in Kiel, in Germany. And I really understood that I want to do medieval history. In Riga, I had really two good professors who were teaching medieval history, but I understood that it's not enough, so I went to Budapest, the Central European University now located in Vienna, and I studied medieval studies there.
And later, I had a chance to study at the University of Queen Mary in London, and I was supervised by Mary Rubin. And there, my interest in medieval commemoration began.
And during my studies in London — it was a wonderful time — but I had a problem. I didn't have funding. So I moved to Germany to the University of Freiburg where I was writing — continuing writing my doctoral thesis on medieval commemoration and memory in Livonia. And after that, I had a chance to work at the National Library of Latvia, and also very exciting and interesting postdoctoral projects at the universities of Tallinn and Greifswald.
IE: Wonderful. So that's interesting that your early experience in a Catholic school has brought you all the way into studying commemoration in medieval Livonia. Thanks. Thank you for sharing that.
So, as I mentioned, you are the author of Remembering the Dead: Collective Memory and Commemoration in Late Medieval Livonia, which came out in November of 2023 and was also awarded the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies book publication subvention.
It's also one of two recent monographs by Latvian historians to really be published internationally. And our colleague Una Bergmane, who also recently spoke on this podcast, published, published the other. The book examines the practices of remembering, and how those practices have influenced or had their impact on medieval Livonia,

This year, NATO marks its 75th anniversary, while the Baltic countries celebrate 20 years as members of the alliance. Dr. Lukas Milevski speaks about the history of that inclusion, and shares his thoughts about the future.
Milevski is a tenured assistant professor at Leiden University, where he teaches strategic studies in the BA International Studies and MA International Relations programs. He has published widely on strategy, including two books with Oxford University Press: The Evolution of Modern Grand Strategic Thought (2016) and The West’s East: Contemporary Baltic Defense in Strategic Perspective (2018).
Baltic Ways is a podcast brought to you by the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies, produced in partnership with the Baltic Initiative at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of AABS or FPRI.
Transcript
Indra Ekmanis: Hello, and welcome to Baltic Ways, a podcast bringing you interviews and insights from the world of Baltic studies. I'm your host, Dr. Indra Ekmanis. And today we speak with Dr. Lucas Milevski, a tenured assistant professor at Leiden University, where he teaches strategic studies. This year marks 75 years of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and 20 years of the Baltic states' inclusion in that alliance. Dr. Milevski gives us his insights into the history, and what may be next for the Baltic states as part of NATO. Stay tuned.
IE: Thank you so much for joining us today on Baltic Ways. Perhaps we can start with you telling us a little bit about yourself, your background and how you came to be involved in this field of study.
Lukas Milevski: I'm Lukas Milevski. I'm presently an assistant professor at Leiden University in the Netherlands. And for an American audience, it's worthwhile to mention that in the Netherlands, assistant professor is a tenured position. And I research and write about military strategy in general, theory, history, contemporary analysis, as well as contemporary military defense.
I am a Latvian American dual citizen, so I've also maintained both a personal and a professional interest in Baltic defense. I published my first piece on that topic way back in 2010 when I was still a master's student. I published a book on the subject, The West's East: Contemporary Baltic Defense in Strategic Perspective, in 2018, and have continued writing on the topic regularly ever since for various venues, including FPRI's own Baltic Bulletin.
IE: Well, thank you for sharing that background. We are here to talk a little bit about NATO today. NATO this year celebrates its 75th anniversary in April. In March, the Baltic states also celebrate 20 years of being in the alliance, having joined in 2004. As we commemorate these milestones, how would you describe the organization's evolution, its history with the Baltic states from your perspective?
LM: So 75 years of history is quite a bit, especially for an international alliance. And I'm sure there will be plenty written on this history to mark the 75th anniversary. So what I'll do now is just sketch out certain inflection points in NATO's history and the degree to which the Baltic states featured in those points or experienced consequences as a result, whether positive or negative.
So the first inflection point is obviously 75 years ago itself, when NATO was founded. In the words of Lord Ismay, who was its first Secretary General, NATO was founded to keep the Americans in, the Germans down, and the Russians out. We don't consider that second purpose relevant anymore, but the other two have remained wholly relevant.
The Baltic states during this time were, of course, occupied by the Soviet Union, and simply formed part of the enemy for NATO. The next real inflection point was the end of the Cold War and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union, which allowed the Baltic states to spring out of nationa

Dr. Janet Laidla shares her work on charting the roles and contributions of women at the University of Tartu from the early days of the Estonian Republic, and what it means today. 
Baltic Ways is a podcast brought to you by the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies, produced in partnership with the Baltic Initiative at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of AABS or FPRI.
Read more: 
* Estonia's first female doctorates were educators and physicians | News | ERR 
* Eesti esimestest naisdoktoritest said eeskätt arstid ja õpetajad | Ajalugu | ERR
* Laidla, Janet; Anepaio, Lembi (2024). Esimesed doktorikraadiga naised tänapäeva Eesti aladelt [The First Female PhDs from the Present-day Estonian Area]. Õpetatud Eesti Seltsi aastaraamat / Annales Litterarum Societatis Esthonicae, 28−67. https://oes.ut.ee/publikatsioonid/
Transcript
Indra Ekmanis: Welcome to Baltic Ways, a podcast bringing you interviews and insights from the world of Baltic studies. I'm your host, Dr. Indra Ekmanis. Today, we listen to a conversation with Dr. Janet Laidla, lecturer in Estonian history at the University of Tartu. Dr. Laidla's recent research has focused on the history of women at the university and the essential roles they have played in both academic and non academic work. Stay tuned.
Thank you so much for joining us on Baltic Ways. Perhaps you can start with a bit about your background and how you came to be involved in Baltic studies.
Janet Laidla: Thank you so much for inviting me. It's a bit of a long story. So bear with me, because I have a bit of an unconventional academic career path. It started out conventional enough. So I did my BA and MA in history at the University of Tartu in Estonia, and then right after went straight to PhD also in history, also at the University of Tartu.
But in my fourth year of PhD, in early modern chronicles, I got a bit stuck. So instead of graduating, I went out to look for a job. And eventually I was hired by the University of Tartu Museum. And there I worked in different positions and for several years I was the head of the Old Observatory. I enjoyed that a lot.
But instead of history I was promoting astronomy for 10 years, and my research was more concentrated on the history of science [rather] than the history of 17th century chronicles. I still had a small position at the Institute of History and Archaeology as lecturer, and although I always planned to defend my PhD eventually, I got around to it when the university changed the rules and said you now have to have a PhD to be a lecturer.
But as I said, my focus had already changed, so after graduating I was moving slowly at first towards the 20th century. And, because I had been working on the early modern period, I now also had to seek out new networks. And I had been aware, through a lot of my colleagues, of the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies. But, well, a few years ago, I decided now it's time because I was working in similar topics that my colleagues who were members were now working on.
IE: Maybe you can tell us a little bit about that transition from studying early modern historiography, and then you went into history of astronomy and sciences, and now your focus is on studying women in academia. Perhaps you can trace that path for us a little bit.
JL: Well, the University Museum is not only about history of science, it was also about the history of university, and I had been interested in the history of university, especially women students for a while, specifically the period of the 1920s and the '30s, the interwar period.
And for the university centenary in 2019, where we celebrated the hundred years of Estonian-language university, we were preparing an exhibition at the National Archives on academic women. And we were so surprised that there was so little research on t

How do we remember tragedies? How do populations construct memories and memory institutions around these events? How can contemporary researchers begin to make sense of these complex landscapes? Dr. Margaret Comer of University College London joins us to discuss heritage studies, dark heritage, and her fieldwork in Russia and Estonia.

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How have Latvian and Lithuanian histories intertwined over the last millennium? Who was Queen Morta, a Latvian princess by birth who became the wife of Lithuania's first and only king, Mindaugas? How close did we come to a Latvian-Lithuanian state in the early 20th century? How do Latvians and Lithuanians see their shared commonalities today? James Montgomery Baxenfield, Junior Research Fellow at Tallinn University School of Humanities, walks (literally) through this complex history.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit fpribalticinitiative.substack.com

How did Estonian democracy erode in the 1930s? How did liberal dissidents express their discontent under a more oppressive regime? Why is political rhetoric important, both now and then? Dr. Liisi Veski, fellow at the Skytte Institute, University of Tartu, dives into this complex, informative world of letters.

Baltic Ways is brought to you by the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies, produced in partnership with the Baltic Initiative at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit fpribalticinitiative.substack.com