Elena Hoffenberg Awarded 2026-2027 Dissertation Grant

May 4, 2026

The Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies is pleased to announce that Elena Hoffenberg 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 smiling woman with glasses and curly brown hair

Elena Hoffenberg is a PhD Candidate in modern Jewish history at the University of Chicago. Focused on the Jewish minority of Poland between the First and Second World War, her dissertation examines how members of a middleman minority related to the future when living under capitalism. Her research has been supported by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Archives, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research.

Project Overview
As a work of social and cultural history, Hoffenberg’s dissertation draws from a diverse set of sources to recreate how vernacular meanings of future, continuity, and investment shaped the lived experiences of individuals. Each chapter focuses on an institution or practice that traces how Jews in interwar Poland negotiated confrontation between social and cultural values and political and material pressures: primary schooling, vocational training, credit cooperatives and free loan societies, marriage, and childrearing. In addition to supporting Hoffenberg’s dissertation writing during the upcoming academic year, the AABS Dissertation Grant will underwrite remote research with collections at the Lithuanian Central State Archives for the interwar Wilno Voivodeship to furnish state perspectives on vocational training and primary education, the subjects of two of her chapters.