The Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies is pleased to announce that Rūta Vyšniauskaitė 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.
Rūta Vyšniauskaitė completed her Bachelor’s degree in Political Science at the University of Birmingham in 2022 and earned a Master’s degree in Social and Cultural Anthropology at University College London (UCL) in 2023. In 2025, she began her doctoral studies at the IIRPS (VU IIRPS) and is preparing a dissertation titled “Where Does the Lithuanian Political Community Begin and End? A Study of Public History Practices and Political Self-Identification in the Vilnius Region” (supervisor Prof. Dr. Violeta Davoliūtė). Since 2024, Vyšniauskaitė has been working as a junior researcher in the project “Facing the Past: Public History for a Stronger Europe” (EUROPAST), where, together with a multidisciplinary team of researchers from other VU faculties, she collects data on public history practices among memory institutions, memory activists, and national minority communities in the Vilnius region.
Project Overview
Rūta Vyšniauskaitė’s dissertation seeks to understand and explain the political self-identification processes in the Vilnius region in the context of contemporary geopolitical changes by combining research on memory institutions, political institutions, and public history practices. The dissertation grant will support Vyšniauskaitė’s fieldwork, a fellowship at a leading regional institution in borderland research, exploratory research abroad, and improvement of foreign language skills. As a result, she will be able to see the complex historical and cultural contexts in which political self-identification unfolds in the Vilnius region. The grant support will significantly contribute to Vyšniauskaitė’s professional development and network.