The Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies is pleased to announce that Robert Lipiński 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.
Robert Lipiński is a doctoral student of Politics at Oxford. He uses quantitative methods to study historical political economy (HPE), the role played by history in shaping political developments in the long run. Prior to his doctoral studies, Lipiński worked on several projects related to public administration reform in the World Bank’s Bureaucracy Lab. Lipiński holds a BSc in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from University College London, and an MPhil in Development Studies from the University of Cambridge.
Project Overview
Robert Lipiński’s doctoral thesis seeks to understand the role played by Finnish TV in shaping political attitudes of Estonians, both during and after the Cold War. The northern parts of Estonia were virtually the only place in the whole Soviet Union where a TV signal from a non-communist country could be received. Therefore, they provide a perfect setting (what social scientists refer to as a ‘natural experiment’) for learning invaluable lessons about how liberal media can impact the values and behaviors of people living in authoritarian systems. The support obtained under the AABS Dissertation Grant for Graduate Students will allow Lipiński to obtain access to necessary historical microdata, including census data from the Cold War and individual-level survey results from the first post-independence years. In addition, he plans to conduct a targeted survey of people who used to watch Finnish TV growing up in Soviet Estonia, so as to better understand how it came to be remembered and influence their lives.