What is the ongoing relevance of Baltic Studies? As the new academic year gets underway, we speak with three scholars in the field about what it means to study the Baltic region today. What challenges is the field facing, and what might the future look like? What does the broadening of Baltic Studies beyond the three Baltic states mean for the field? Jörg Hackmann, the current president of the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies, joins, along with Epp Annus and Karsten Brüggemann, leading researchers who bring post-colonial and historical perspectives to the table. Transcript Ben Gardner Gill: Welcome to Baltic Ways. I’m your host, Ben Gardner Gill. Today, as a new academic year is underway, we thought it was time to take a look at the state of Baltic studies as a field. Joining us today are three scholars with different perspectives on where the field is, where it’s been, and where it’s going. Jörg Hackmann is an Alfred Döblin professor at the Department of History, University of Szczecin, Poland. He serves as President of the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies in the 2024 to 2026 term. Hackmann holds a PhD from the Free University of Berlin and received his habilitation at Greifswald University with publications focusing on the history of Northeastern and East Central Europe, in particular on historiography, memory cultures, civil society, and regionalisms, with a focus on transnational entanglements. Epp Annus is an associate professor at the Institute of Humanities at Tallinn University and a lecturer at the Department of Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures at Ohio State University. She received her PhD from the University of Tartu. Annus is a post-colonial and de-colonial scholar interested in the complex ideological entanglements of the Soviet and post-Soviet periods. Karsten Brüggemann is a professor of Political and Social History at the School of Humanities of Tallinn University. He received his PhD in history from the University of Hamburg in 1999 with a study of the Russian Civil War in the Baltic region. In 2013, Brüggemann defended his habilitation at the University of Gießen with a study on the perception of the Baltic provinces in Russian imperial culture. Please enjoy the episode. Jörg, Epp, Karsten, thank you so much for joining Baltic Ways. Jörg, we’re just going to jump in right with you. You are the President of the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies (AABS), so it seems most appropriate to ask you what exactly is Baltic studies? Jörg Hackmann: This is actually a very complicated question because there are various, different understandings of Baltic studies or the Baltic region. If we would start with the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies: There the background are the exiled communities of the three Baltic nations of Estonians, Latvians, and Lithuanians. This would be one understanding, but if we stick with these [exiled communities], there’s another larger exiled community, which would be Germans from these regions: the so-called Baltic Germans. This would be a narrow approach, but there are some wider approaches. The widest actually would stem from the Baltic Sea Region, which also has Baltic in its name in most of the languages. It’s very difficult or even impossible, right from the beginning to make a distinction between Baltic in the sense I described before—of the three Baltic nations—and the wider region. If we do the wider region, of course, then we could talk about political geography. One of the widest understandings would be the understanding of the Council of the Baltic Sea States, which does not only include states bordering the Baltic, but also states a little bit further away, like Norway and Iceland. And of course, there are reasons why this is so. The Council of Baltic Sea states, when it was founded, also included Russia. Russia is now out for obvious reasons, and this then would lead us to another understanding. So, to what extent is Russia included in our understanding of Baltic? You’ll see there are quite a lot of diverging understandings. If you ask the Journal of Baltic Studies, which is edited by AABS, then we might find an authoritative answer. They say they focus on the Baltic states and the Baltic Sea region, which also implies that there’s a difference between Baltic states—which they understand as the three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—but also they include the wider Baltic Sea region. This means we have these tensions in the understanding of Baltic studies. And I would also argue that this tension adds very much to the relevance of Baltic studies. BGG: Absolutely. It’s hard to define the field, but there’s also some clear through lines there. I’m going to ask Epp to pick those apart a little bit. Jörg already alluded to the obvious reasons for why Russia was kicked out of the Council on Baltic Sea States: of course, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. And that’s led to increased interest in the region as a whole and in the three Baltic states specifically. So Epp, could you maybe tell us a little bit about the relevance of Baltic studies, especially in the last three plus years since February 24th, 2022, but also more generally? Epp Annus: Yes. So indeed, a lot has changed since February 2022. We’ve seen a huge rise of interest in the Baltic Sea region. I was teaching at the Ohio State University—February 24th, 2022, I drove to my campus, and I listened to the local radio, NPR, and who was talking there but Kaja Kallas, the then Estonian Prime Minister. And strikingly this day was Estonian Independence Day (of course, that fact was not mentioned at all in what Kaja Kallas was saying to American audiences). That fact already for me is such a symbolic marker of the importance of our region. And I think it’s a scholar’s mission to make sure that its importance reaches further from politics. And as scholars, we can provide facts, we can provide history, we can contextualize. And there has been a lot of interest in this. For example, I think many of us have experienced that it’s now way easier to publish books, articles, not only about the Baltic states per se, but also particularly about Estonia, about Latvia, about Lithuania. Whereas in 2010 you would come with a manuscript about the Baltic States—historians were always welcome I think, but in cultural studies they would say, “Yeah, sure, but why don’t you extend to the rest of Eastern Europe?” And now I came with a manuscript about Estonia in the 1960s to 1990s, and it was welcomed and was speedily published. This is, I think, a very good marker for our era. And I think we have a mission. We have a role as part of NATO and the European Union as a region. We have more authority, and we need to talk, encourage the voice of our region, also in larger terms to the audience. I encourage us all to work like hell to publish a lot to make our voice audible because we are not heard these days. BGG: Absolutely. We’ve definitely seen that across the disciplines and Baltic studies is an interdisciplinary field. It’s area studies: So, there are historians, there are political scientists, there’s cultural studies, there’s linguistics, there’s all sorts. I couldn’t name all of them. Karsten, from your perspective, teaching in Estonia, as a German, but also as someone who’s engaged throughout the region, could you speak a little bit to Epp’s points about the relevance of Baltic studies as a field and the impact that’s had? Karsten Brüggemann: Yes, it’s a sad truth, right? I mean, this is how attention works. It’s only really interesting when something happens or when something is about to happen. This classical headline: Is Narva next? This started already in 2014 after the annexation of Crimea, not the least, because historians and of course Estonian historians, have pointed to the similarities and how this annexation of Crimea was performed, right—similarities to the annexation of the Baltic states in 1940. And so, you immediately have this connection to the historical experiences in this particular region. This makes this historical experience also available right now. When we follow the political discussions in Europe, when we have now these European, Western European, Central European politicians who would say, “Oh my God, if we would have listened to what the Baltic colleagues have told us all the time, maybe we would’ve been better prepared for what is waiting, in the future.” This is, again, pointing at the relevance of this particular very small, very tiny region, even on a global scale. And as Epp pointed out, this is a sad fact, but this really is an encouragement for us to really be active and to publish. So I can only support Epp. BGG: Absolutely. Yes, it is a small region on a global scale, but there are fairly unique lessons that the Baltic can teach the rest of the world, especially given current conflicts. So Jörg, back to you. You published a piece when we started up AABS, our LinkedIn account, just a few months ago, earlier in 2025, about what Baltic studies can teach the world. And I think very much to Karsten’s point, it’s looking at these historical examples. From your own perspective, what value does Baltic studies provide moving forward? We can point back and say, you should have listened, here’s the history and whatnot, and there’s value in that. Maybe it gets people to listen down the road, but what’s the ongoing relevance of the field, as we look forward? JH: I would start with a rather old quote by an Estonian intellectual, who was saying that small nations have a wider horizon because they cannot ignore the existence of others. This you could use as a motto for what, let’s say, the value of Baltic studies is—it opens the possibility to look at wider topics from the perspective of smaller
