The Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies is pleased to announce that Lauren Rogers has been awarded a 2024-2025 Dissertation Grant for Graduate Students.
AABS awards grants of up to $4,000 to support doctoral dissertation research and write-up in any field of Baltic Studies. Funds may be used for travel to research site, equipment, duplication or other needs as specified.
Proposals are evaluated according to the scholarly potential of the applicant, and the quality and scholarly importance of the proposed work, especially to the development of Baltic Studies. Applicants must currently be enrolled in a PhD or MA program and have completed all requirements for a PhD/MA except the dissertation. Applicants must be members of the AABS at the time of submitting their application.
The 2024 applications were evaluated by the AABS 2023-2024 Grants and Awards Committee consisting of AABS VP for Professional Development Dr. Kaarel Piirimäe, AABS President Dr. Dovilė Budrytė, and AABS Director-at-Large Dr. Daunis Auers. Learn about the other 2024-2025 recipients here.
Lauren Rogers is a doctoral candidate at the University of Edinburgh. Her research interrogates the ontological security dynamics within the European Union and the role of narratives in this process. Prior to her doctoral studies, Rogers worked in diplomacy and was an Alexander von Humboldt German Chancellor Fellow.
Project Overview
Lauren Rogers’s dissertation centers on these dynamics within the context of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The cases under review in this research are Estonia, Finland, Ireland, and Germany and the dissertation examines how these states have narrated the war. These narratives reflect ontological security concerns in terms of memory, the Self as a political project, and the role of the other in narrating war. Each of these states has significant moments of convergence and divergence with the narrative of the war as told by the EU, and the resulting narrative changes reflect moments of ontological stress and perhaps a need to seek distinction from the EU lens.
The methodology for this research is narrative analysis, including speeches, statements, and social media post made for international audiences from the governments in these states. In addition, contextual interviews have been and will be conducted in each state with civil servants and experts, and sites of memory are included as broader ontological security projects. The AABS Dissertation Completion Grant will support the final set of fieldwork for this research, which is to be conducted in Germany. Furthermore, this grant will support the writing-up year of the dissertation, which is set to be finished in May 2025.