2026-2028 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.

Violeta Davoliūtė (PhD, University of Toronto) is a specialist in the politics of memory, historical trauma, and national identity. She is a Professor at Vilnius University, Institute of International Relations and Political Science, and a Senior Researcher at the Lithuanian Institute of History. Based on a deep engagement with oral and cultural history, she has published extensively on the experience, memory, and representation of the German and Soviet periods of foreign occupation, including the Making and Breaking of Soviet Lithuania: Memory and Modernity in the Wake of War. She held fellowships at the Vienna Wiesenthal Centre for Holocaust Studies, Yale University, the Imre Kertesz Kolleg in Jena, and the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris, among others. She is a co-editor of the CEU Press book series, Memory, Heritage and Public History in Central Europe. As the leader of the EUROPAST project (Horizon Europe 2022-2025), Prof. Davoliūtė managed a consortium of four universities from Lithuania, Sweden, Germany, and Luxembourg to study and promote best practices of public history. She maintains an active schedule of media and speaking engagements, hosts a regular podcast on public history, and serves as a historical advisor to documentary filmmakers and museums, such as the Lost Shtetl in Šeduva, Lithuania.

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

Ieva Zaķe (PhD, University of Massachusetts, Amherst) currently serves as 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 Vice President for Conferences plans and organizes conferences for the exchange of research findings and professional views.

Liina-Ly Roos (PhD, University of Washington) is Assistant Professor of Scandinavian Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She specializes in Nordic and Baltic film, television and cultural studies, with a specific focus on migration, ethnicity and race, sexual politics, postcolonial, and childhood studies. Liina-Ly has published articles in Journal of Scandinavian Studies, Journal of Scandinavian Cinema, Journal of Baltic Studies, Methis: Studia humaniora estonica, and Baltic Screen Media Review. Her recent book, The Not-Quite Child: Colonial Histories, and Swedish Exceptionalism (University of Washington Press, 2025) examines films and novels from Sweden that incorporate Indigenous Sámi, Tornedalian, and Finnish-speaking children who rethink and disrupt the normative idea of Swedish childhood, as they engage with colonial histories and racial hierarchies in Sweden.

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-NYC College of Technology. Her research examines the social, material and power implications of agrarian and food system change in and outside of the Baltic States. She currently studies food sovereignty in Lithuania in the context of changing geopolitics and the role of family relations and care work in industrial agriculture. Her research has been supported by numerous grants, including awards from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Fulbright Program as well as fellowships and residencies in the Agrarian Studies Program at Yale University; the Rachel Carson Center at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich, Germany; and European Studies programs at New York University and Harvard University.

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

Mart Kuldkepp (PhD, University of Tartu) is Professor of Estonian and Nordic History at UCL, and has held Visiting Professorships at University of Tartu and Yale University. He specialises on Scandinavian and Baltic history and politics and early 20th century wars. He has published in the idea of Estonia’s Nordic identity, German annexationism in the First World War, Swedish right-wing nationalism in 19th and early 20th century, and the experiences of soldiers in the First World War and the Estonian War of Independence. He is also interested in contemporary Baltic and Scandinavian politics, especially foreign and security policy, and is a frequent commentator on Estonian and international media.

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) currently serves as AABS’ Treasurer. He 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 third year Ph.D. student in Linguistic Anthropology at the University of South Carolina. Her interests concern migration, language, identity and belonging, with a focus on Lithuania, where she is currently a Fulbright student researcher. Her anticipated dissertation research will center on the Lithuanian response to increased migration flows, including how migration and migrants are understood and constructed through discourse, social imaginaries, and material practices. A fluent speaker of the language, Aimee has been involved with Lithuania for a number of years through employment experience, social and familial ties, and academic research.

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.

Daina Eglitis (PhD, University of Michigan) currently serves as AABS’ President-Elect. She 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 Director-at-Large serves as the Chairperson of the Nominating Committee and performs other duties as specifically requested by the Board of Directors.

Jörg Hackmann (PhD, Free University Berlin) currently serves as President 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.