Members

Christopher Browning

Christopher Browning is an Associate Professor at the University of Warwick. Previously he has worked at Copenhagen Peace Research Institute and the Danish Institute for International Studies where he worked on the programme for Nordic/Baltic Security. His research interests are in critital approaches to security and the politics of identity. More specifically he is interested in the role and power of margins and small states in international relations. Published work most relevant to the workshop includes: Constructivism, Narrative and Foreign Policy: A Case Study of Finland (Peter Lang, 2008); 'Beyond East-West: Marginality and National Dignity in Finnish Identity Construction', Nationalities Papers 35(4) 2007, pp.691-716 (with Marko Lehti). 'Branding Nordicity: Models, Identity and the Decline of Exceptionalism', Cooperation and Conflict 42(1) 2007, pp.27-51. 'Small, Smart and Salient? Rethinking Identity in the Small States Literature', Cambridge Review of International Affairs 19(4) 2006, pp.669-684.

Olga Cara

Olga Cara is a research student at the UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies. her research focuses on modern Russian diasporas in post-Soviet states. Her main regional area of focus is Latvia and her general research interests are ethnic identity, ethnicity, acculturation as well as social integration and multiculturalism. She is also interested in the wider benefits of education and role of education systems in acculturation and civic enculturation processes. Thus her interests include sociological aspects of bilingual education and second language acquisition. Her PhD explores associations between ethnic self-concept and acculturation strategies of ethnic Russian adolescents, their teachers and peers/classmates in Latvia. Recent publications include: Pisarenko, O (2006). The acculturation modes of the Russian-speaking adolescents in Latvia: perceived discrimination and knowledge of the Latvian language, in Europe- Asia Studies, Vol 5 July 2006, and Pisarenko, O., Zepa, B., (2004). Latvian Russians: Identity, Citizenship, Language in Studia Slavica Finlandensia, Tomus XXI pp. 79-106, ed. Petra Sinisalo-Katajisto. Helsinki: Finnish Institute for Russian and East European Studies, in English

Mary Hilson

Mary Hilson is Senior Lecturer in Scandinavian History at the Department of Scandinavian Studies, UCL. Before then she worked as a post-doctoral researcher at Uppsala University. Her main research interests are in modern Nordic social and political history, especially transnational and comparative labour history. Her current research is concerned with the consumer co-operative movement in the Nordic countries and beyond during the first half of the twentieth century. Mary has also written about Swedish history writing and the consensus tradition, and she is currently editing (with Jenny Andersson) a collection on the image of Sweden in C20th political discourse. From January 2008 she will be a visiting researcher at the Renvall Institute, University of Helsinki.

Titus Hjelm

Titus Hjelm is Lecturer in Finnish Society and Culture at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, UCL. He joined UCL in 2007 after a period of post-doctoral research in Helsinki and at the University of Amsterdam. His main research interests are sociology of religion and cultural sociology, especially the study of religion, media, and social problems. He has also written about contemporary popular culture, with a focus on the Nordic heavy metal scene.

Richard Mole

Richard Mole is Lecturer in the Politics of Central Europe at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, UCL. Before then he held posts as post-doctoral Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania's Solomon Asch Center for the Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict, and as Mellon Research Fellow at UCL. His research focuses on the relationship between identity and power, with particular reference to legitimacy, foreign policy and security and, more recently, gender and sexuality. Drawing on Post-Structuralist Discourse Theory, the aim of Richard’s presentation at the Study Day is to understand why attitudes towards gays and lesbians in the Baltic States are among the worst in the EU. He will analyse political discourse to discover the processes by which politicians have sought to legitimise their discriminatory attitudes towards gays and lesbians and, in particular, will examine the relationship between sexuality and national identity to show that homosexuality is particularly reviled because it is seen as a threat to the continued existence of the nation and the core values that define it.

Matthew O'Sullivan

Matthew O'Sullivan is a second-year student on the M.Phil programme in Russian and East European Studies at the University of Oxford. His focus on the Baltic region stems from an interest in the social position of the Russian-speaking population in post-Soviet states. His professional background in market research then led him towards an interest in methodologies based on qualitative interviewing. His current research project is entitled 'The Russian-speaking population in Latvia: ethnic identity and higher education choice', and is based on interviews conducted with final-year students in three Riga secondary schools in September 2008. His presentation at the Study Day will use interview data to explore the ways in which considerations of national belonging, specifically, motivate young Russian-speakers as they decide where (and whether) to pursue a course of higher education. The full research project will expand this focus to locate considerations of national belonging within the wider range of structural and cultural factors shaping young people's choices.

Violeta Parutis

Violeta Parutis is a graduate research student at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, where she is about to submit her PhD thesis on “'At Home' in Migration: the Social Practices of Constructing Home among Polish and Lithuanian Migrants in London”. Based on the empirical study of recent young Polish and Lithuanian migrants in London, her research challenges the conventional understanding of home and explores the ways in which transnational migration and home construction constitute one another. First, she investigates how the notion of 'home' is constructed by recent Polish and Lithuanian migrants, and how it contributes to the making of migrant identity. Second, she demonstrates the importance of 'home' for understanding migrants' behaviour and attitudes. The key starting point of her thesis is that home is constructed on the basis of everyday social practices. Therefore she explores strategies which these migrants use to make themselves feel at home in their immediate living and working environment in the UK, but also in the wider British society. Violetta’s study also considers their relationship with the home country while in the UK and after return. Comparatively young Polish and Lithuanian migrants constitute a new generation of East Europeans who are European citizens. This gives them a privilege to enjoy unrestricted travel and accumulate experience outside their home country. It is therefore interesting to observe how they negotiate their identity and belonging in the context of globalization and transnationalism.

Kristina Spohr Readman

Kristina Spohr Readman is Lecturer in International History at the LSE. Her main research interests lie in the International History of Germany since 1945, twentieth century Baltic and Finnish history in the international context; post-Cold War security developments (esp. NATO); and the methodology of Contemporary History. Recent publications include Germany and the Baltic Problem after the Cold War: The Development of a New Ostpolitik 1989-2000 (London/New York: Routledge, 2004) and the edited book Building Sustainable and Effective Capabilities: A Systemic Comparison of Professional and Conscript Forces (Amsterdam: IOS, 2004) as well as numerous articles. Kristina is currently working on a monograph on chancellor Schmidt's West Germany, 1974-82 - studying the interaction between the domestic and foreign policy realms against the background of wider international developments. Having previously researched (West) German Baltic policies during and after the Cold War, as well as the Baltic States and Finland in the interwar period, she is now also beginning to explore British Baltic policies in the context of Soviet Dis-union.

Allan Sikk

Allan Sikk is Lecturer in Baltic Politics at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, UCL. His main research interests lie in the fields of party system dynamics, electoral behaviour and political science methodology and he has earlier published in European Journal of Political Research and Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics. He is currently working on Green politics in Estonia and ethnic patterns of voting in the Baltic countries.

Charles Walker

Charles Walker is CEELBAS Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Social Inequality in Russia and Eastern Europe. His substantive research interests lie in the sociologies of youth, work and education, with a focus on transformations of class and gender in the context of emerging forms of labour market and educational integration in the former Soviet Union. Both his doctoral and postdoctoral research have addressed these themes through studies on the changing nature of youth transitions to adulthood amongst graduates of Initial Vocational Education (IVET) colleges, which have traditionally prepared young people for employment in the industrial and agricultural sectors. While his PhD was based on an ethnographic case study of young people in the Ul’ianovsk region of Russia, his Postdoctoral research centres on two new case studies in the cities of St. Petersburg and Vilnius. For more information about the project, please follow this link: http://www.ceelbas.ac.uk/research/socialinequality/researchproject

This page last modified 6 November, 2008 by Richard Mole

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