2024-2026 AABS Board of Directors Election

The President-Elect aids the President in the carrying out of his or her duties in a coordinated effort to provide a continuity of Association’s administration. He or she automatically succeeds to the Presidency at the end of the two year term following his or her election to the office of the President-Elect.

Daina Eglitis (PhD, University of Michigan) is Associate Professor of Sociology and International Affairs and Undergraduate Program Director at The George Washington University’s Columbian College of Arts & Sciences. Her research focuses on the social dimensions of postcommunist transformations in Eastern Europe. She is especially interested in the ways in which transformation has affected women in the region and the ways in which women have responded to the dramatic changes of the last decade. She is also interested in demography and migration in the Eastern and Central European space. In 2021, she was co-editor of the book, Central and East European Politics, 5th edition (Rowman & Littlefield). Daina has twice been a Fulbright Scholar in Latvia and in 2015 was a Research Fellow at the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. She continues to actively research, write, and speak about her work on Holocaust memory in the Baltic countries, and on women’s experiences of the Holocaust and World War II in the East and Central European region.

The Vice President for Professional Development coordinates and facilitates scholarly activities to develop Baltic Studies, especially in the Baltic states.

Kaarel Piirimäe (PhD, University of Cambridge) currently serves as AABS Vice President for Professional Development. He is Associate Professor of Contemporary History at the University of Tartu and Research Fellow at the University of Helsinki. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge in 2009 with a thesis on the Big Three Allies and the Baltic states in WWII (published as Roosevelt, Churchill, and the Baltic Question: Allied Relations during the Second World War, 2014). Piirimäe has edited several volumes and special journal issues on the history of the Baltic states in the twentieth century. His recent writings include an article on Liberalism and the small states, Gorbachev’s new thinking and the Soviet republics, and concepts of time in Estonia’s transition from perestroika to the market. Currently he is researching Estonian foreign and security policies in the 1990s.

The Vice President for Conferences plans and organizes conferences for the exchange of research findings and professional views.

Olga Makarova serves as Reference Librarian at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign Library. She has experience in library reference, acquisitions, and technical services. She holds degrees in Philology and Russian as a Foreign Language from St. Petersburg State University, as well as a MS in Library and Information Sciences from the University of Illinois. Olga’s research interests include gender studies and digital curation. She is also interested in the history of international library interactions.

The Vice President for Publications plans and directs the Association’s publications program and oversees its awards and prizes programs.

Diana Mincyte (PhD, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) currently serves as AABS Vice-President for Publications. She is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the City University of New York-City Tech. Her research focuses on environmental politics and food; gender and agriculture; science and technology studies; and socialism/postsocialism in the Baltic states. Trained in sociology, she engages in interdisciplinary and collaborative projects. She has published in leading journals, co-edited two volumes, collaborated on a book, and guest-edited a number of special issues in journals. Her research has been supported by grants, including awards from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Fulbright Program. She held fellowships and residencies in the Rachel Carson Center for the Environment and Society at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich, Germany; the Agrarian Studies Program at Yale University; and European Studies at New York University and Harvard University. Her latest research focuses on social reproduction and circular economies.

The Secretary prepares comprehensive meeting minutes and assists the executive office with correspondence, records, and elections while serving on committees as necessary.

Ieva Zaķe (PhD, University of Massachusetts, Amherst) currently serves AABS’ Secretary. She is Dean of the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at Millersville University. She was previously Vice Provost at The College of New Jersey, and professor of sociology and Associate Dean of the College of Science and Mathematics at Rowan University. She is an author of American Latvians: Politics of a Refugee Community and Anti-Communist Minorities in the US: Political Activism of Ethnic Refugees as well as numerous articles dealing with issues of nationalism in Latvia during the interwar period, intellectuals in politics, post-communist politics, tourism to the USSR during the cold war era and post-World War II Eastern European immigrants in the US.

The Treasurer prepares the annual budget, makes authorized investments, supervises collections and disbursements of funds, and maintains proper accounting records. He prepares and presents the financial reports of the Association.

Charles Kroncke (PhD, Auburn University) is professor of economics and Chair of Business Administration at Mount St. Joseph University. He joined the Mount in 2003. He teaches several economics classes for the financial economics major, the MSOL program, and the MBA program.  These courses include money and banking and international economics. He has 25  peer-reviewed research publications and several conference presentations. In 2016, he was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Tartu. In addition, he serves as Honorary Consul for the Republic Of Estonia for Ohio and Kentucky.

The Student Representative advocates the undergraduate and graduate student interests in the association, promotes grants and awards, and organizes student workshops at conferences.

Aimee Herring currently serves as AABS’ Student Representative. She is a rising fourth-year Ph.D. student at the University of South Carolina, where she has recently transferred from Educational Foundations and Inquiry to (Linguistic) Anthropology. Her research interests concern migration, language, identity and belonging, with a focus on the Baltic region. Her anticipated dissertation research will center on the Lithuanian response to increased migration flows, including how migrant identities are constructed through linguistic practice, as well as how borders and identity are understood and constructed through discourse, social imaginaries, and material practices. Aimee’s relationship with the Baltic region goes back to the mid-1990’s, when she worked first as a Peace Corps volunteer/TEFL teacher in Klaipeda, Lithuania, and later, as a TEFL instructor, teacher trainer, and program lead for youth instruction at Soros International House in Vilnius, Lithuania. Aimee married into a Lithuanian family, and maintains ties with friends, family, and former students and colleagues there.

The President is the chief executive officer of the Association, performing all duties required by the Constitution and Bylaws, or, if not specified, those approved by the Board of Directors. Following his or her term the President becomes the Director-at-Large.

Jörg Hackmann (PhD, Free University Berlin) currently serves as President-Elect of AABS. He  is Alfred Döblin Professor at the Department of History, University of Szczecin, Poland, and Director of the International Center for Interdisciplinary Studies at the University of Szczecin. He is also associated with the University of Greifswald, Germany, and serves as Vice-President of the Johann Gottfried Herder Research Council (Germany). Jörg Hackmann holds a PhD from the Free University Berlin and received his habilitation at Greifswald University. He has been a visiting scholar at many universities in the Baltic Sea region as well as in Chicago. Publications focus on the history of North-Eastern and East Central Europe, in particular on historiography, memory cultures, civil society and regionalisms with a focus on transnational entanglements. Most recent publications include Geselligkeit in Nordosteuropa (Sociability in North-Eastern Europe), Harrassowitz 2020. Current research interests include the role of history in Baltic Sea region building, a biography of Werner Hasselblatt, and the Jewish topography of (German) Szczecin.

The Director-at-Large serves as the Chairperson of the Nominating Committee and performs other duties as specifically requested by the Board of Directors.

Dovilė Budrytė (PhD, Old Dominion University) currently serves as President of AABS. She has also served as President-Elect from 2020–2022 and Vice President for Publications from 2016-2018 and 2018-2020. She is Professor of Political Science at Georgia Gwinnett College and a member of EUROPAST project at the Institute of International Relations and Political Science, Vilnius University. In 2015, 2018 and 2019 she was a visiting professor at Vilnius University and Vytautas Magnus University in Lithuania. She has published articles and books on various topics related to minority rights and memory politics in Lithuania, including Memory and Trauma in International Relations: Theories, Cases and Debates (co-editor with Erica Resende, Routledge 2013), and Crisis and Change in Post-Cold War Global Politics: Ukraine in a Comparative Perspective (co-edited with Erica Resende and Didem Buhari, Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). In 2014/15, she was the recipient of the University System of Georgia Excellence in Teaching Award.