Vilnius University (Lithuania)
Rusnė Marija Poligaitė is a graduate of the Bachelor’s program in Political Science at the Institute of International Relations and Political Science, Vilnius University (VU IIRPS), class of 2025, awarded a Magna Cum Laude diploma. Since autumn 2025, she has been enrolled in the Master’s program in Contemporary Politics. Her Bachelor’s thesis, which forms the basis for this conference proposal, was recognized as the best thesis in its cohort (field – Comparative Politics) and was awarded the Romualdas Ozolas Honorary Scholarship. During the 2023–2024 autumn semester, she studied at Sciences Po Lyon as part of the ERASMUS+ exchange program, where she earned a Certificate in Political Science. She is an active participant in academic conferences: in 2023 and 2024 she took part in the student session of the Annual Lithuanian Political Science Conference at VU IIRPS, and in 2025 she participated in the interdisciplinary student conference “Discoverers of Histories” organized by the Faculty of History, Vilnius University. During her undergraduate studies, she and her colleagues developed an oral history project titled “What Did It Mean to Be a Relative of an Anti-Soviet Resistance Participant During the Soviet Era?”, which was recognized as one of the best works in the course Anthropology of Soviet and Post-Soviet Societies and was published this year on the website of the Center for (Post)Soviet Memory Studies at VU IIRPS.