The Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies is pleased to announce that John Ellis has been awarded the 2025-2026 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 2025 applications were evaluated by the AABS 2025-2026 Grants and Awards Committee consisting of AABS VP for Professional Development Dr. Kaarel Piirimäe, AABS President Dr. Jörg Hackmann, and AABS Director-at-Large Dr. Dovilė Budrytė. Learn about the other 2025-2026 recipients here.
J.C. Ellis is a doctoral candidate with the Centre for Geopolitics and Wolfson College at the University of Cambridge. His research investigates the role of British diplomacy during the construction of Europe’s post-Cold War security architecture in the 1990s. Ellis is a research associate at The Marathon Initiative and the convener of the U.S. Foreign Policy Seminar at Cambridge. He received his BA from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and MPhil from St John’s College, University of Cambridge.
Project Overview
Ellis’s dissertation tells the story of the collapse of Soviet power in Central and Eastern Europe and the expansion of Western institutions, namely NATO, into that vacuum throughout the 1990s. Whereas this story is traditionally narrated from the perspective of Washington or Moscow, Ellis presents the tumultuous events of the end of the twentieth century through the prism of British foreign policy. His research traces the intermingling and tension between traditional geopolitical considerations and neoliberal economic impulses driving British strategy during this period. Ultimately, the project aims to rectify the lack of historical attention paid to Britain during this formative period of order-building and contribute to our understanding of Britain’s enduring geopolitical interests on the continent, particularly its easternmost flank.
The AABS Dissertation Grant will allow Ellis to conduct important fieldwork in the Bush and Clinton presidential libraries in the United States. This research is essential to filling the gaps in the British archival record and illustrating the extent to which British preferences held sway in the corridors of power in Washington. It will also shed important light on geopolitical divergences between the British and American perspectives on Eastern Europe – a particularly salient issue given today’s challenges.