Webinar: The Fate of Europe: Ukraine, the Baltic Region, and Collective Security

Hanna Shelest is a Director of Security Studies and Global Outreach Programmes at the Foreign Policy Council “Ukrainian Prism” and Editor-in-chief at UA: Ukraine Analytica. Dr. Shelest is also a non-resident senior fellow at CEPA (Washington, DC). Before this, she had served for more than ten years as a Senior Researcher at the National Institute for Strategic Studies under the President of Ukraine, Odesa Branch. In 2014, Dr. Shelest was a Visiting Research Fellow at the NATO Defense College in Rome. She has experience in strategic communication and consultancy for government and business, as well as teaching at universities. Since 2006, Dr. Shelest has been a guest lecturer for the Diplomatic Academy of Ukraine, George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies, Swedish Defence University, Ukrainian Catholic University, etc. Dr. Shelest was an adviser of the Working Group preparing Ukrainian Navy Strategy 2035 and was involved in working groups developing the Foreign Policy Strategy of Ukraine, Asian Strategy for MFA, and Ukraine’s NATO Public Communication Strategy.

Marko Lehti is a Research Director of Tampere Peace Research Institute (TAPRI) and an Academic Director of master’s programme in Peace, Mediation and Conflict Research (PEACE) both at Tampere University, Finland. Lehti’s current research focusses on peace mediation and peacebuilding, multilateralism, and changing global order. In his research, he has also dealt with transnational encounters, identifications as well as perceptions Europe’s imaginary dividing lines among others in the Baltic countries, the Nordics, the South Caucasus, and the Balkans. His latest publications include “Suspending the antagonism: situated agonistic peace in a border bazaar” (with Romashov) Third World Quarterly (2022), “Contestations of Liberal Order. The West in Crisis?” (with Pennanen and Jouhki) (Palgrave 2020) and “The Era of Private Peacemakers. A New Dialogic Approach to Mediation” (Palgrave 2019).

Victoria Vdovychenko is a widely recognised and published expert on the issues of hybrid warfare and strategic communication, with particular emphasis on relations between Ukraine and the European Union, as well as NATO.

She is currently working on the challenges of the European Union, Euro-Atlantic integration, hybrid warfare and strategic communication, collaborating with such educational institutions as the University of Bologna, George C. Marshall Center for Security Studies, KU Leuven, University Catholic Louvain, Cambridge University and Borys Grinchenko Kyiv University.

Victoria is currently a Program Director for Security Studies at the Center for Defence Strategies. She is a co-author of policy papers “Ukraine under Zelenskyy: Domestic, Foreign and Security Policy in Flux” (2022), “Willingness to fight for Ukraine: Lessons for the Baltic states” (2022), “Resilience Paper Review” (2022) and “Shaping up social resistance: Zelenskyy’s approach to rearranging Ukraine” (2023).

Currently, Victoria is involved in conducting research on the strategies of Ukraine’s victory and its implication for the Black Sea area, as well as European security architecture. This project is a joint cooperation between the Catholic University of Louvain (UCL, Belgium), Tallinn Technological University, and the University of Bologna (Italy).

Daunis Auers is Professor of European Studies and Jean Monnet Chair at the University of Latvia. He is also the Director of the independent, privately funded Latvian Strategy and Economic Research (LaSER) think-tank and serves as a member of the president of Latvia’s State Competitive Council. He studied at the London School of Economics and defended his PhD at University College London. He has been a Fulbright Scholar at the University of California-Berkeley (2005-2006) and a Baltic-American Freedom Foundation Scholar at Wayne State University in Detroit (2014) and published widely on political parties, elections, referendums, populism and the radical right and economic competitiveness in the Baltic states. His book on The Comparative Government and Politics of the Baltic States: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in the 21st Century – was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2015. He is currently working on a monograph analyzing Nordic-Baltic integration.

He served as President-Elect of AABS from 2019-2020, President from 2020-2022, and Director-at-Large from 2022-2024.

Jörg Hackmann (PhD, Free University Berlin) is Alfred Döblin Professor at the Department of History, University of Szczecin, Poland, and since 2021 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.

He served as President-Elect of AABS from 2022–2024 and currently serves as President of AABS.