Dr. Inga Zakšauskienė

The Office of the Chief Archivist of Lithuania

Inga Zakšauskienė defended her doctoral dissertation in the humanities at Vilnius University on the topic “Western Radio Broadcasts to Soviet Lithuania” in 2015. Dr. I. Zakšauskienė’s scholarly work includes the Cold War, media history, the impact of information in enclosed societies, and information wars. Since 2011, she has worked at the Faculty of History at Vilnius University. She was a fellow at Stanford University (USA) from 2017 to 2018, and participated in the activities of the Totalitarian Regimes Research Group of the Hoover Archive (USA) from 2012 to 2016. From 2013 to 2021, she worked as an expert of the first evaluation board of Real Cultural Heritage at the Department of Cultural Heritage under the Ministry of Culture. She is an initiator and implementer of various historical research and dissemination projects and an author of books. Since 2023, she has held the position of Chief Archivist of Lithuania. 

Dr. Robertas Vitas

Lithuanian Research Center, USA

Dr. Robertas Vitas serves as Chairman of the Board of the Lithuanian Research Center in Lemont and Chicago and participated in its founding in 1982. The Center is the largest Lithuanian academic institution, archive, and publisher outside Lithuania. 

Dr. R. Vitas has published The United States and Lithuania: The Stimson Doctrine of Nonrecognition; Civil-Military Relations in Lithuania Under President Antanas Smetona 1926-1940; and two volumes of U.S. National Security Policy and Strategy: Documents and Policy Proposals. His other publications include over two dozen scholarly reports, articles, book chapters and book reviews. He has served on the editorial boards of Armed Forces & Society, Journal of Baltic Studies, Lituanus, and Presidential Studies Quarterly. 

Dr. R. Vitas previously served as Vice President of the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies and is a member of the Lithuanian Catholic Academy of Sciences. 

He earned his Ph.D. in political science at Loyola University of Chicago and served as a Visiting Scholar at Northwestern University from 1995 until 2009. He served in the United States Army Reserve where, among other assignments, he was a liaison to troops from the Lithuanian Army during early NATO Partnership for Peace exercises. 

Dr. Ramunė Šmigelskytė-Stukienė

National Museum – Palace of the Grand Dukes of Lithuania

Dr. Ramunė Šmigelskytė-Stukienė is a historian, Deputy Director General for Culture and Science of the National Museum – Palace of the Grand Dukes of Lithuania (Vilnius), and Senior Researcher at the Department of the History of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania at the Lithuanian Institute of History (Vilnius). The main directions of her scholarly interests include social and political history of the 18th century Grand Duchy of Lithuania (political elite of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, noble confederations), dissemination of Enlightenment ideas in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Development of state institutions in modern times, partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.  

Ramunė Šmigelskytė-Stukienė is the author and co-author or editor of 24 books and over 100 published papers in the fields of social and political history.  

Dr. Monika Rogers

Memory and Justice Research Center at Mykolas Romeris University, NGO “Platform of European Memory and Conscience”

Dr. Monika Rogers is a Lithuanian historian specialising in the history of law, crime, and criminal prosecution in Lithuania and the USSR, post-Soviet transformation, transitional justice, genocide, repressions, crimes against humanity, victimology, and historical memory. She began her career at the Genocide and Resistance Research Center of Lithuania in 2010 and earned a PhD in History from Vilnius University in 2017.  

Dr. Rogers has held various academic and research positions, including Research Fellow at the University of St. Gallen (2013-2014) and Project Coordinator at the Berlin-Hohenschönhausen Memorial (2015-2016). She co-authored the Lithuanian section in “Honoring Civil Courage: Developing Suggestions to Improve the Situation of Victims of Communist State Crimes” and led multiple research projects, notably at Vytautas Magnus University on gender-based violence in 20th century Lithuania.  

In 2019, she was a Postdoctoral Associate at Yale University and has worked at universities in Germany, Hungary, Sweden, and the USA, including Harvard as a Fulbright scholar in 2022. Dr. Rogers was a 2020/21 fellow of the “Re: Constitution – Exchange and Analysis on Democracy and the Rule of Law in Europe”.  

From 2022–2023, she researched universal jurisdiction for investigating war crimes in Ukraine at the Lithuanian Ministry of Justice as part of the “Create Lithuania” (Kurk Lietuvą) program. Currently, she heads the Memory and Justice Research Center at Mykolas Romeris University and works in other Lithuanian academic institutions; she also serves on the Supervisory Board of the NGO “Platform of European Memory and Conscience”.  

Dr. Eva Naripea

Film Archive of the National Archives of Estonia

Eva Näripea is the Director of the Film Archive of the National Archives of Estonia (since 2014) and a member of the Council of the Estonian Academy of Arts (since 2020). She has worked as a researcher at the Estonian Academy of Arts, Estonian Literary Museum and University of Central Lancashire. Additionally, she has served as an editor for various scholarly journals, including Studies in Art and Architecture/Kunstiteaduslikke Uurimusi, Baltic Screen Media Review (TLU), and Studies in Eastern European Cinema (Routledge). She has written extensively on Estonian and East European film history and contemporary cinema and has translated several key works in audiovisual theory into Estonian. Alongside her role as the head of the Film Archive, she continues to conduct research, currently focusing on the histories of film preservation and pre-World War II cinema in Estonia. 

Dr. Mārtiņš Mintaurs

National Library of Latvia

Dr. Mārtiņš Mintaurs, graduated in 2008 with PhD in history from the Faculty of History and Philosophy at the University of Latvia (Riga). In 2003–2017 he worked as exhibition curator at the Daugava River Museum, since he 2008 worked as a lector at the Faculty of History and Philosophy at the University of Latvia. He is currently an assistant professor and teaches courses in cultural history, memory institutions and methodology of history. Since 2017 Dr. M. Mintaurs has been working at the National Library of Latvia (NLL), from 2017 to 2021 at the Department of Rare Books and Manuscripts, and is currently a senior researcher at the Research and Interpretation Centre of the NLL. Since 2015 he is an editor of the literature and history magazine Domuzīme in Riga. Member of the ICOMOS Latvia NGO. 

Dr. M. Mintaurs is an author of 35 academic publications. His scientific interests are in history of the 19th and 20th century, including history of architectural heritage protection activities, literary history and memory institutions, cultural policy of the Soviet regime in Latvia (1945–1991). 

Prof. Dr. Ruth Leiserowitz

German Historical Institute Warsaw, East European History at the Humboldt University of Berlin

Ruth Leiserowitz, PhD, is Deputy Director at the German Historical Institute in Warsaw and Professor for East European History at the Humboldt University, Berlin. Her research is focused on the European history of the 19th and 20th centuries, with a focus on transnational history, Baltic history, Jewish history as well as the history of memory and border regions. She is currently researching a project entitled “Jewish Trading Areas in Transition 1772-1850″. Her most recent publication is “Space as a Category for the Research of the History of Jews in Poland-Lithuania 1500-1900″, zusammen mit Maria Ciesla, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz 2022 [Quellen und Studien Bd. 40].  

Dr. Laura Juchnevič

Klaipėda County Ieva Simonaitytė Public Library

Dr. Laura Juchnevič has a PhD in Social Science (Information and Communication field) with management experience in organisations, information services, projects and communication.  
She has been the Head of the Klaipėda County Ieva Simonaitytė Public Library since July 2019.
She is also a lecturer at Vilnius University, Faculty of Communication, Chairwomen of the Lithuanian Librarians’ Association since May 2023, Board member of the Lithuanian County Public Libraries Association, and member of Lithuanian Communication Association.  

Dr. Małgorzata Maria Grąbczewska

Royal Lazienki Museum in Warsaw

She graduated from the Department of Art History and from the Department of Interdisciplinary Individual Studies in the Humanities of Warsaw University, studied museology at Ecole du Louvre in Paris. She received her PhD in art history from the University of Gdańsk. In 2005–2011, she worked as a curator of the photographic collections of the Polish Library in Paris, then as assistant curator in Château de Compiègne. In 2012–2013 she was appointed deputy head of the Department of Iconographic Collections of the National Library in Warsaw and, between 2013 and 2016, worked as a cultural attachée at the Polish Embassy in Paris.Dr. M. M. Grąbczewska worked at the Polish History Museum and now works at the Royal Łazienki Museum, where she has been the Deputy Director since 2021. Professor of MBA Diplomacy in Vistula University, Warsaw.  

She is president of the Polish Association of Photographic Historians, a Board Member of the Association of European Royal Residences, and a member of many scientific associations in Poland and across Europe.  

She is also active as a researcher, curator, editor and author and translator of academic books. She has managed several research projects. She is author of several dozen scientific articles, critical and popular texts on the history of art in the 18th and 19th centuries, devoted to the issues of collecting, the relationship between politics and art, and photography.  

Dr. Ingrida Veliutė

chair, Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania

Dr. Ingrida Veliutė is the Deputy Director General for Research and Strategic Development at the Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania, the project manager for the investment project “Consolidation and modernisation of cultural heritage information systems”. 

Her scientific interests are cultural policy, management of memory institutions and cooperation in the fields of culture, education and science, implementation of innovations in the cultural sector. 

She initiates and prepares, with her team, the strategic documents of the National Library, forms and coordinates the policy for the implementation and dissemination of scientific research. Dr. I. Veliutė also gives lectures and presentations on various topics related to cultural heritage. 

Michael H. Bernhard

University of Florida (United States of America)

Michael H. Bernhard is the inaugural holder of the Raymond and Miriam Ehrlich Eminent Scholar Chair in Political Science at the University of Florida.

Bernhard’s academic work centers on questions of democratization and development both globally and in the context of Europe. Among the issues that have figured prominently in his research agenda are the role of civil society in democratization, institutional choice in new democracies, the political economy of democratic survival, and the legacy of extreme forms of dictatorship. He recently finished up a stint as a co-PI on the research side of the Varieties of Democracy project and is responsible for its batteries on civil society and state sovereignty.

Prior to coming to Florida, Bernhard was on the faculty of Penn State University for twenty years. He has also been a visiting researcher at the Institute of Sociology and Philosophy at Warsaw University and the Center for International Affairs at Harvard University. He has delivered public lectures at a large number of public and private universities in the North America, Asia, and Europe, and has conducted archival and field work in Poland, Germany, England, and Hungary.

In his career Bernhard has held a number of important administrative responsibilities — chair of the APSA section on European Politics and Society, chair of the Network on the Historical Study of States and Regimes of the Council on European Studies, member of the editorial board of Penn State Press, and the chair of the editorial committee of the newsletter of the comparative democratization section of the American Political Science Association. He recently completed a six year term as editor-in-chief of Perspectives on Politics (2017-2023).

Bernhard received his BA from the University of Pennsylvania, and has graduate degrees from Yale (M.A. Russian and East European Studies), and Columbia (Ph.D. Political Science). He has taken short-term courses of study at the Louis Kossuth University in Debrecen (Hungary), Jagellonian University in Krakow (Poland), the Catholic University of Lublin (Poland), and Goethe Institute in Boppard am Rhein (Germany).

Violeta Davoliūtė

Vilnius University (Lithuania). 

Violeta Davoliūtė is Professor at Vilnius University, Institute of Political Science and International Relations, and Project Leader of Facing the Past: Public History for a Stronger Europe (Horizon Europe, 2022-2025). She completed her Ph.D. at the University of Toronto and has recently held fellowships at the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies, Imre Kertész Kolleg Jena, Yale University, EHESS, and Uppsala University. She has published extensively on the topics of memory, historical trauma, identity, and nationalism. Her most recent publications include “The Gaze of the Implicated Subject: Non-Jewish Testimony to Communal Violence during the German Occupation of Lithuania,” East European Politics and Societies 37.2 (2023): 493-511, and “Agonistic homecomings: Holocaust postmemory, perspective and locality.” Memory Studies 15.3 (2022): 539–550. Prof. Davoliūtė is a co-editor of the CEU Press book series Memory, Heritage and Public History in Central and Eastern Europe.

Zigmas Vitkus

Klaipėda University, Institute of Baltic Region History and Archeology (Lithuania).  

Zigmas Vitkus is a research fellow at the Institute of Baltic Region History and Archeology, University of Klaipėda (Lithuania) and a publicist. He is a graduate of Vilnius University, Faculty of History and Centre for Religious Studies and Research. His fields of interest are politics of memory, culture of memorials, with the focus on memorials in genocide places, genocide history. He is an author of two monographies (one of which is a collective monography) and various articles on the above-mentioned topics.

Vidmantas Balkūnas 

15min news website (Lithuania). 

Vidmantas Balkūnas is a Lithuanian press photographer and investigative journalist specializing in social issues, military conflicts, and disaster areas. He holds a Master’s degree in Journalism from Vilnius University and has been active in the media since 1997. Currently, he works as an investigative and features journalist at 15min. His articles, photographs, and photo essays have been featured in prominent publications, including The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. His footage has also been utilized by international agencies such as AFP and AP.

Balkūnas has reported from various conflict zones, including Kosovo, Afghanistan, Ukraine, and Nagorno-Karabakh, as well as covering the 2015 Maidan Revolution in Kiev. He has ventured beyond the Arctic Circle, working with cave explorers and mountaineers while documenting their adventures. In 2015, he reported on the migrant crisis by following asylum seekers from the Syrian border to Germany, and in 2016, he covered the situation at the Greek-Macedonian border. His photography includes sites of the terrorist attacks in Brussels and migrant camps in Sicily. In 2020, he documented the efforts of medical professionals in the red zones during the COVID-19 pandemic and conducted exclusive investigations into criminal gangs involved in illegal waste disposal, human trafficking, and financial market manipulation.

Toby Butler

Royal Holloway, University of London (United Kingdom).  

Dr. Toby Butler is a public historian with a wide-ranging skill set developed in higher education, the third sector and the media industry. Currently he is Reader in Geography at Royal Holloway University where he is a leading a project on the Oral History of the Environmental Movement in the UK from 1970-2020 in partnership with National Life Stories at the British Library.

He has devised collaborative oral history projects in India, the USA, Wales, and England. He has created oral history trails along the River Thames with the Museum of London and several London parks for local authorities. He was project director for the “Ports of Call” project at the Royal Docks in East London to map and historically interpret the working history of the area. Dr. Butler is also a Director of LivingMaps Network, an editor of History Workshop Journal and recently worked on the Mapping Museums project at Birkbeck, University of London, to map of all the museums in the UK from 1960-present featuring interviews with 57 museum founders that featured Stories from Small Museums.

Tymoteusz Barański

The National Library of Poland (Poland).

Tymoteusz Barański is a postdoctoral researcher at the National Library of Poland, where he runs the Copyright Lab. He graduated summa cum laude from the Warsaw University, Department of Law. In 2022 he obtained a PhD in legal sciences. His research focuses on copyright issues, primarily in the context of new technologies. His academic interests merge with legal practice, as he has been an attorney for more than a dozen years. He is the author of numerous academic publications in the field of law, several of them on the matter of memory institutions’ copyright issues.

Tetiana Hranchak

Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs at Syracuse University (United States).

Tetiana Hranchak is a Visiting Assistant Teaching Professor at the Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs at Syracuse University (United States). Hranchak has 20 years of research and teaching experience at the Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine and the Kyiv National University of Culture and Arts, she held the position of the Adjunct Lecturer at the School of Information Sciences of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 2023-2024. She is a member of the board of the Ukrainian Library Association, an author of the scientific and methodological guide “Libraries Participation in the Implementation of the Politics of National Memory” (Kyiv, 2021).

Tetiana Boriak 

Vilnius University (Lithuania).  

Tetiana Boriak is a PhD in history (2008) and a habilitated doctor of historical sciences (2024), currently serving as an associate professor and researcher at Vilnius University in Lithuania. She is the author of three books, including Oral History as a Source for Holodomor Studies: Formation of Eyewitness Testimony Collections and their Informative Value (2024) and 1933: “Why Are You Still Alive?”, which won the “Book of the Year” prize in the research/documents category (nomination: History) in Kyiv in 2016. A Fulbright Fellow at Harvard University’s Ukrainian Research Institute (2013–2014), she developed a GIS-Atlas of the Holodomor. Additionally, she hosted the historical educational program History with Meat (2017–2022), which features approximately 70 episodes available on YouTube.

Stana Tadic Pantic

Belgrade University, Faculty of Media and Communication (Serbia).  

Stana Tadic Pantic is a historian and educator with a strong focus on archival science and the preservation of historical documentation. Currently serving as an Examiner for History AS Level with Cambridge International Education since June 2019, she evaluates student assessments to enhance educational quality. As a History Teacher at Chartwell International School in Belgrade since 2015, Ms. Tadic has developed comprehensive lesson plans that have significantly improved student exam pass rates. Her expertise also extends to women’s rights advocacy, having worked as a consultant for Kvinna till Kvinna, where she produced influential analyses on EU integration and gender benchmarking in the Balkans. Previously, as Chief Archivist and Researcher at the Humanitarian Law Center in Belgrade, she spearheaded the preservation and digitization of critical records, collaborating with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Currently pursuing a PhD in History at the Faculty for Media and Communication in Belgrade, Ms. Tadic combines her passion for history with a commitment to innovative educational methodologies.

Rūta Matimaitytė

EUROPAST / Vilnius University (Lithuania).

Rūta Matimaitytė is a doctoral student at the Lithuanian Institute of History (Lithuania) writing her doctoral dissertation on the topic of “Migration of Children to Soviet Lithuania (1944 – 1960): History, Memory, Trauma”. Her research on the German children of East Prussia was awarded the Prize of the Department of National Minorities. The researcher is actively engaged in the promotion of memory of the German children of East Prussia in Lithuania. She gives public lectures, and contributes to projects involving schoolchildren. Matimaitytė’s research interests span across the fields of migration, children, memory and trauma, as well as the application of oral history.

Rikard Friberg von Sydow

Södertörn University (Sweden). 

Rikard Friberg von Sydow is the head of the small Department of Archival Science and Library and Information Science at Södertörn University (Sweden). As a senior lecturer in Archival Science, he bagan his career as an archivist in the Swedish Military Forces before transitioning to academia after earning his doctorate in Ethics. His research is focused on conspiracy theories, medical information and cultural studies.

Revekka Kefalea

National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (Greece). 

Revekka Kefalea holds a Bachelor’s degree in Social Policy and Social Anthropology (Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences), a Master’s degree in Urban and Regional Planning (National Technical University of Athens), and a Master’s degree in Political Science and Sociology (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens) (Greece). Currently affiliated with the Institute for the Study of Greek-German Relations of the Department of Political Science and Public Administration (NKUA), she explores the images of Germany in Greece during WWI in cultural heritage materials of the era. Alongside her academic pursuits, she serves as a project manager at Inter Alia (a non-profit organization based in Athens, Greece), conceptualising and managing grant-funded projects in relation to arts, (digital) cultural heritage, (emerging) technologies, open access, and civic engagement. Additionally, as a Creative Commons Certificate Facilitator, she supports professionals of diverse backgrounds to acquire a better understanding of the tensions between copyright and digital technologies, and advocate for open access within their institutions.

Peter Techet

University for Continuing Education Krems / Institute for Danube Region and Central Europe (Austria).  

Peter Techet has completed his studies in Law in Budapest (Hungary) and Munich (Germany), as well as in History at Regensburg (Germany). He earned dual PhDs: one in Modern European History from The Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz and another in Law and Political Sciences from Péter Pázmány Catholic University in Budapest.

From 2012 to 2014, he served as a research associate at the Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies in Regensburg, followed by a position at the Leibniz Institute for European History in Mainz from 2014 to 2018. He has also worked at the University of Freiburg from 2020 to 2024 and has been affiliated with the University of Zurich since 2022. Currently, he is a research associate at the University for Continuing Education in Krems and at the Institute for Danube Region and Central Europe in Vienna.  

Peter Techet has participated in several visiting fellowships, including at the Austrian Historical Institute in Rome, New York University, the University of Genoa, and the University of Lucerne. He has published over 100 works focused on legal history, political theory, the history of East Central Europe, and the history of the Habsburg Monarchy.  

Oksana Pliushchyk

Institute of Biographical Research, V.I. Vernadskyi National Library of Ukraine (Ukraine).  

Oksana Pliushchyk is a PhD in Philology. She has served as an Associate Professor at the Department of Ukrainian Literature, Comparative Studies, and Social Communications at Borys Grinchenko Kyiv University (Ukraine), where she later became the Head of the Postgraduate Program. Currently, she is a Senior Researcher at the Department of Theory and Methods of Biobibliography at the Institute of Biographical Research, V.I. Vernadskyi National Library of Ukraine. Her research interests include biography, biography of public space, visualization of biographies, biographies of defenders of Ukraine, collective memory, cultural memory, national memory, memorialization.

Tetiana Chorna

National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy Library (Ukraine). 

Tetiana Chorna is a Ukrainian librarian and the Director of the Scientific Library of the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. She is a member of the Ukrainian Library Association. Tetiana received higher education at the Kyiv State University of Culture and Arts, where she studied from 1996 to 2001, specializing in Library Science and Bibliography. In February 2022, she became the coordinator of the project to create the National Digital Library of Ukraine. In 2023, she was appointed Deputy Head of the working group for the creation of the National Electronic Library of Ukraine under the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy of Ukraine.

Oleh Serbin  

Yaroslav Mudryi National Library of Ukraine (Ukraine).  

Oleh Serbin is a Ukrainian librarian and Dr. habil. in Social Communications. He serves as the Director General of the Yaroslav Mudryi National Library of Ukraine and is a professor at both the National University of Culture and Arts and Taras Shevchenko Kyiv National University. A leading specialist in systematization, indexing, and library and information classifications in Ukraine, Oleh is the author of over 20 scientific publications.  

In addition to his academic work, Oleh is actively involved in public service and volunteer activities. He is a member of the Presidium of the Ukrainian Library Association and works within the Working Group under the Ministry of Culture on the creation of the National Electronic Library.  

Oksana Brui

Yaroslav Mudryi National Library of Ukraine (Ukraine).  

Oksana Brui is a Ukrainian librarian and public figure currently serving as the Deputy Director General of the Yaroslav Mudryi National Library of Ukraine. She is the President of the Ukrainian Library Association and the Head of the Supervisory Board of the Ukrainian Book Institute. Oksana holds a PhD in Social Communications and is the author of approximately 20 publications, over 15 handbooks, and two Massive Open Online Courses for librarians. She is also one of the authors of the Strategy for the Development of Libraries of Ukraine for 2017-2025. In addition to her writing, Oksana is an active member of various working groups and commissions at Ukrainian ministries, particularly focused on the creation of the National Electronic Library. Her main professional interests include strategic management, open science, knowledge management, and the integration of IT in libraries.

Neringa Latvytė

EUROPAST / Vilnius University (Lithuania).  

Dr. Neringa Latvytė defended her dissertation on the communication of Holocaust memorial sites in Lithuania at the Faculty of Communication of Vilnius University (Lithuania), where she is an assistant professor and a lecturer of traumatic memory and heritage communication. Prior to joining the Faculty of Communication, she worked for 20 years at the Vilnius Gaon Museum of Jewish History. She has published several articles about memorialization of traumatic past in Lithuania. Her current research combines practical and theoretical challenges on communication and transmission of traumatic memories, effect of interactions on difficult and traumatic heritage and history on contemporary identities and attitudes.

Liucija Vervečkienė

EUROPAST / Vilnius University (Lithuania).

Liucija Vervečkienė, PhD, is an assistant professor and researcher at the Institute of International Relations and Political Science, Vilnius University (Lithuania). Her research interests cover interdisciplinary memory studies, methodologies of memory research, political sociology and European studies. Liucija is a member of the Horizon-Widera project „Facing the Past: Public History for a Stronger Europe“ (2022-2025). She is also a postdoctoral research fellow at the Lithuanian Institute of History where she conducts her research on the shifts of discourses on collaboration(ism) after a transformative regime change.

Laurynas Peluritis

Vilnius University, Faculty of Philosophy (Lithuania).

Laurynas Peluritis holds a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Philosophy from Vilnius University (Faculty of Philosophy) (Lithuania). In 2022, he defended his dissertation at the Faculty of History titled “The Cave and Two Suns. Philosophy in Soviet Lithuania (1944–1986). Institutions, Personalities, Ideas”. Since 2023, he has been working at the Institute of Philosophy of Vilnius University. His research interests include political philosophy, history of ideas and concepts, history of Lithuanian philosophy.

Kristina Petrauskė

Vytautas the Great War Museum (Lithuania). 

Kristina Petrauskė is the Deputy Director of Vytautas the Great War Museum in Kaunas, Lithuania. She is not just a leader within one of the country’s most iconic cultural institutions, but is also responsible for making history more accessible and engaging to a wide audience.

With a deep passion for the past, she has made it her mission to bring history to life in creative and modern ways. Outside her role at the museum, Kristina extends her influence to social media, creating historical content on Instagram. Through her posts, she captures the essence of Lithuanian and European history, presenting it in a format that resonates with today’s digital audience. By using Instagram’s visual storytelling features, Kristina shares fascinating historical facts, archival materials, and lesser-known narratives that spark curiosity and conversation among her followers.  

Her work goes beyond simply sharing historical content—she connects the dots between the past and present, offering a perspective on how historical events shape today’s world. Kristina’s unique approach highlights not only the importance of historical awareness but also the relevance of museums in a digital era. Whether she’s working on museum exhibits, spearheading accessibility initiatives, or curating content for her Instagram page, Kristina’s goal remains the same: to make history engaging, inclusive, and accessible for all.  

Kostas Arvanitis

University of Manchester (United Kingdom).  

Dr. Kostas Arvanitis is a Senior Lecturer in Museology at the Institute for Cultural Practices at University of Manchester (United Kingdom). Since 2017, Kostas has been working with a range of individuals and organisations internationally in researching practices of collecting, documenting and digitising large-scale spontaneous memorials following terrorist attacks and disasters. Based on this work, Kostas has also led the formation of the International Network of Spontaneous Memorials, an international community of practice and support network on collecting spontaneous memorials. Kostas is currently on a Research, Development and Engagement Fellowship (funded by the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council), titled “Museums and Spontaneous Memorials. A Museology of Trauma”.

Jolanta Budriūnienė

Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania (Lithuania).  

Jolanta Budriūnienė, PhD, is the Director of the Documentary Heritage Research Department of the Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania. She is the author and editor of handbooks, collections of articles, academic publications, and popular articles. She has participated in numerous international scientific conferences and has managed and implemented vairous national and international projects.

J. Budriūnienė completed research internships at the Institute of Lithuanian Culture in Germany (2013) and the Center for Lithuanian Studies and Research in Chicago (2017). Additionally, she served as an expert at the Lithuanian Culture Council (2014-2016) and has been on the board of the non-governmental organisation Baltic Heritage Network (BaltHerNet) (since 2012) and the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies (AABS) (since 2017). In 2021, she defended her PHD thesis on the topic of „Communication strategies in the English-Language Cultural Lithuanain American Press (1950-1990)“.

Her main areas of interest include cultural heritage protection and research, as well as cultural studies of Lithuanian diaspora.

Jan Haugner 

University of Bern (Switzerland).  

Jan Haugner pursued his Bachelor’s degree in History and German Studies at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (Germany) from October 2016 to October 2019. He continued his studies at the same institution, completing his Master’s degree in Early Modern History from October 2019 to March 2022. Since September 2022, he has been a PhD student in the Swiss National Science Foundation project “Republican Secrets: Silence, Memory, and Collective Rule in the Early Modern Period”. The preliminary title of his dissertation is Accessing Past Secrets: Archival Practices in the Swiss Republics.

Jacek Kordel

National Library of Poland (Poland).  

Jacek Kordel studied history in Warsaw and Berlin from 2007 to 2012 and earned a PhD in early modern history in 2017. Since 2018, he has been an assistant professor at the Faculty of History at the University of Warsaw and, since 2019, the head of the Historical Department at the Institute for Book and Reading Research at the National Library of Poland.

At the National Library, his research focuses on the fate of Polish books and library collections during World War II. In the field of library history, he has published several works, including: NS-Bibliothekspolitik im besetzten Polen. In: C. Conter (ed.), NS-Bibliothekspolitik und -praxis in Europa („Bibliothek und Wissenschaft“, forthcoming; Der Büchermord: Die Zerstörung der Bibliotheken in der polnischen Hauptstadt während und nach der Niederschlagung des Aufstands (August 1944 bis Januar 1945). In: V. de Senarclens (ed.), Bücher und ihre Wege: Bibliomigration zwischen Deutschland und Polen seit 1939, Paderborn 2024, pp. 21–44; An Ethos of a German Librarian? German Librarians in the General Government in the Light of Contemporary Memories from the Second World War. In: Polish Libraries 11, pp. 86–113; and The Decimation of Polish Libraries during the Second World War. In: Polish Libraries 10, pp. 6–15.

Izabela Paszko

German Historical Institute Warsaw (Poland).  

Dr. des. Izabela Paszko is a cultural anthropologist and social historian specialising in social history of Poland under Nazi occupation. She defended her doctoral thesis at Ludwig-Maximilian University of Munich (Germany) in 2023. Between 2020 and 2023, she was a researcher at the Institute for Contemporary History Munich-Berlin in the INFOCOM project (“Man hört, man spricht”: Informal Communication and Information “From Below” in Nazi Europe). Since January 2024, she has been a postdoctoral researcher at the German Historical Institute in Warsaw (Poland), where she investigates the structural factors shaping history exhibitions related to the Second World War and the Holocaust.

Ignė Rasickaitė  

EUROPAST / Vilnius University (Lithuania).  

Ignė Rasickaitė is currently pursuing her PhD studies at the Faculty of History of Vilnius University (Lithuania). The topic of her dissertation is “The State and Development of Psychology in Soviet Lithuania, 1944-1990” (supervised by Associate Professor Dr. Tomas Vaiseta). I. Rasickaitė is a junior researcher in the EUROPAST project and is currently working as a researcher at the Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania.

Gintaras Dručkus

Kaunas Regional State Archives (Lithuania). 

Gintaras Dručkus holds a master’s degree in history from Vilnius University, Faculty of History (Lithuania), which he acquired in 1983. He has published numerous articles, reports, and publications focused on museology, history, and archiving, with a particular emphasis on the history of Lithuania in the first half of the 20th century.  

His notable publications include the monograph Kaunas City Maps in the 19th – Beginning of the 20th Centuries (Kaunas, 2007) and an article titled Establishment of the Central State Archives of Lithuania in 1918-1921 published in Kauno istorijos metraštis (T. 9, 2008). He is also one of the compilers and co-authors of Dusk Pilgrims: History of Lithuanian Partisans Vytautas District Lokys Selection 1944 – 1958 (2011). Additionally, he collaborated with Kristina Stanišauske on the publication Archives, Archivists and Society: Kaunas County Archive’s Good Practice (Warsaw, Poland, May 22, 2015) and presented To Preserve Archives: Is It Possible to Turn Challenges into Opportunities? Mission (Im)possible at an event in Lemont, Illinois, USA, on October 23, 2021.  

Gerhard Junior

Goethe-University (Germany). 

Gerhard Junior has completed the Master’s degree program in “Political Theory” at Goethe University and the Technical University of Darmstadt, specialising in the research field of “Political Economy”. From 2021 to 2023, he worked as a student assistant at the chair of Professor Grunow.  He also spent a year abroad at the University of Warsaw (Poland) from October 2022 to June 2023. Furthermore, he wrote his Master’s and Bachelor’s theses on the resource curse, a phenomenon in political economy.

Georgi Verbeeck

Maastricht University (the Netherlands) / University of Leuven (Belgium).  

Georgi Verbeeck is a professor of History at KU Leuven (Belgium) and an Associate Professor of Modern European History and Political Culture at Maastricht University (The Netherlands).  His research fields include modern political history, the theory of history, and the politics of memory in divided and post-conflict societies. He published widely on the history of 20th century German history, postwar European history, and memory battles in a global perspective. For further details, please visit his profiles: KU Leuven and Maastricht University.

Geerd De Ceulaerde

University of Antwerp (Belgium). 

Geerd De Ceulaerde graduated in 2011 with a Master’s degree in History and quickly began his career in local public archives. Since 2014, he has been the Head Archivist at Herentals City Archives, gradually transforming this old institution into a proactive, socially oriented institution. Through encountering both paradigmatic and practical challenges along the way, these experiences led to an invitation from the University of Antwerp in 2022 for doctoral research, from a critical heritage studies’ perspective, on the role and position of archives in society and the broader heritage arena. Since then, he has been balancing his roles as a researcher at the University of Antwerp and as a practitioner.

Gabija Vyšniauskaitė-Danušė  

The Institute of Lithuanian Literature and Folklore (Lithuania).  

Gabija Vyšniauskaitė-Danušė holds a Bachelor’s degree in Spanish Philology and a Master’s degree in Interpreting from Vilnius University (Lithuania). Currently, she is pursuing a doctorate at The Institute of Lithuanian Literature and Folklore, focusing on Lithuanian diaspora identity. During her academic journey, G. Vyšniauskaitė-Danušė has actively engaged with Lithuanian communities in Latin America.

Ewa Ochman

The University of Manchester, History Department (United Kingdom).

Ewa Ochman is a Senior Lecturer in East European Studies in the Department of History at the University of Manchester (United Kingdom) and a member of the Centre for the Cultural History of War. She is the author of Post-communist Poland: Contested Pasts and Future Identities and has published on issues relating to Polish politics of memory, difficult heritage, and state-sponsored history after 1989 in Journal of Contemporary History, Memory Studies, History and Memory, Nationalities Papers, East European Politics and Societies, and Cold War History. She is currently working on a book-length study of the history of post-communist de-commemoration in Poland.

Dovilė Budrytė

EUROPAST / Vilnius University (Lithuania).  

Dovilė Budrytė is a Professor of Political Science at Georgia Gwinnett College (USA), and she works on the EUROPAST project at the Institute of International Relations and Political Science, Vilnius University (Lithuania).  She is also associated with Vytautas Kavolis Transdisciplinary Research Institute at Vytautas Magnus University (Lithuania). Her research interests include memory politics, trauma, nationalism, and gender studies. Her publications include articles on various topics related to minority rights and memory politics, as well as one single-authored and five co-edited books, including Memory and Trauma in International Relations: Theories, Cases and Debates (co-editor with Erica Resende), and Defending Memory in Global Politics: Mnemonical In/Security and Crisis (co-editor with Erica Resende and Doug Becker, forthcoming in 2024).  In 2015, she received the University System of Georgia Excellence in Teaching Award.  In 2022-24, she served as the President of Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies.

Dagnija Baltiņa

National Library of Latvia (Latvia).

Dagnija Baltiņa is the Director of the National Library of Latvia. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in History from the University of Latvia, a Master’s degree in Cultural Heritage from Brandenburg University of Technology (Germany), and a Master’s degree in Public Administration from Harvard University (USA). From 2008 to 2016, she served as the Secretary General of the Latvian National Commission for UNESCO and represented Latvia on the UNESCO Executive Board as its Vice President from 2009 to 2011. Dagnija Baltiņa is an expert on UNESCO’s normative instruments and cultural heritage policy, particularly in the areas of preservation and protection of UNESCO World Heritage and documentary heritage. She regularly participates in various international conferences and expert working groups.

Aiga Berzina-Kite

National Archives of Latvia / Institute of Latvian History at the University of Latvia (Latvia).  

 Aiga Berzina-Kite is a PhD candidate and head researcher at the National Archives of Latvia, as well as a research assistant at the Institute of Latvian History at the University of Latvia. She has authored more than 15 scientific publications in Latvia and abroad on the social and political aspects of Interwar Latvia, focusing mostly on Latvian penal policy and crime during Latvian War of Independence. She regularly presents research findings on different local and international scientific conferences.

Michał Raczkowski

Tadeusz Manteuffel Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Sciences (Poland).

Michał Raczkowski is a historian. He is the author of one monograph, editor of three books, and has written several papers focusing mainly on the history of the landed gentry, education, and biographies from the second half of the 19th century to 1945. He has participated in two research projects. Currently, he is a PhD student at the Doctoral School of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Gdańsk and works at the Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Sciences in the Section of Retrospective Bibliography for the 19th and 20th Centuries.  

Elżbieta Nowosielska 

Tadeusz Manteuffel Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Sciences (Poland).  

Elżbieta Nowosielska is the head of the Section for the Retrospective Bibliography for the 19th and 20th Centuries at the Tadeusz Manteuffel Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Sciences (PAS) in Warsaw. Her research focuses on the Polish press between 1865 and 1918. She obtained her PhD in history from the University of Warsaw in 2018. 

Adrianna Szmapik  

Tadeusz Manteuffel Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Sciences (Poland).  

Adrianna Szmapik is a historian and researcher who earned her PhD from the Institute of History at the Polish Academy of Sciences in 2017. She is the author of two monographs and several papers, mainly focusing on the history of ideas, cultural history, and social history at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. She was the manager of a grant funded by the National Science Center in Poland (2011-2015) and a participant in several other research projects. Currently, she works at the Institute of History, PAS, in the Section of Retrospective Bibliography for the 19th and 20th  Centuries and coordinates a project in the field of digital humanities.