Anna Herran Awarded 2026-2027 Dissertation Grant

May 4, 2026

The Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies is pleased to announce that Anna Herran has been awarded the 2026-2027 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 2026 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 2026-2027 recipients here.

A woman in a patterned blue dress
Anna Herran is a Doctoral Candidate in History at the University of Toronto, interested in the connections among history, memory, and statehood in 20th-century East Central Europe and the Baltic region. Her PhD Dissertation, Contested Memories Worth a Century: The Interwar Period as a (un)usable past in the Czech lands and Estonia 1918-2018, examines how the national holidays commemorating the creation of the Estonian Republic (February 24, 1918) and the First Czechoslovak Republic (October 28, 1918) have been officially commemorated from the establishment of the interwar republics to the centenary celebrations in 2018 to understand how different governments throughout the 20th century contested, reinterpreted, rejected, or appropriated elements and symbols of the interwar period to strengthen their political legitimacy, and what the long-term consequences of these choices were.
Project Overview: A Day Worth a Century: Celebrating February 24 in post-1991 Estonia
This project constitutes the last section of Herran’s PhD dissertation. It focuses on how Estonia’s national holiday marking the Declaration of Independence (February 24, 1918) has been celebrated following the country’s re-independence in 1991, looking specifically at the round anniversaries of 1998, 2008, and 2018. Drawing from archival sources and published and unpublished contemporary materials, including official documents and reports, pamphlets, flyers, posters, films, and academic and non-academic publications, Herran will examine the form that these celebrations took, how they were presented to the public, and what narratives of the events of 1918 and of the interwar period in general were presented at the time. The AABS Dissertation Grant will allow Herran to return to Estonia to complete her archival research in Pärnu and Tartu and to conduct interviews with stakeholders involved in organizing the commemorative events.