Michael Loader is a Lecturer in Soviet political history with a focus on the history of national communism in Soviet Latvia.

Michael began working for the journal in 2018 while on a postdoctoral fellowship at the Institute of Russian and Eurasian Studies at Uppsala University in Sweden (2017-2020) as an editorial assistant. Since then, he has risen through the ranks to become an Editor of the journal.

Michael’s PhD thesis at King’s College London (2011-2015) examined the history of the Khrushchev Thaw in Soviet Latvia in the 1950s and early 1960s. He held a postdoc at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow (2016-2017) and was a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellow at the University of Glasgow (2020-2023). He is currently a Lecturer in the Department of Central and East European Studies at the University of Glasgow. Michael’s research interests include the workings of the Soviet Communist Party, nationality politics and centre-periphery relations in the Soviet Union, particularly Soviet Latvia.

Michael was the lead organizer of the conference, “Latvia at a Crossroads: The Centenary of the Latvian State” funded by the Bank of Sweden’s Jubilee Fund, which resulted in the publication of an edited volume with Matthew Kott entitled, Defining Latvia: Recent Explorations in History, Culture, and Politics (2022, CEU Press).

Ammon Cheskin is a Senior Lecturer in Central and East European Studies at the University of Glasgow.

Ammon has been interested in the Baltic states since volunteering as a missionary in Latvia from 2000-2002. While in Liepāja and Daugavpils, he studied Latvian intensively (including an advanced short course at the University of Daugavpils), and Russian half-heartedly. His religious days are behind him, but he is grateful for this unique opportunity.

Ammon completed a BA in Russian and Politics (2007), and an MA in Interpreting and Translating (2008) at the University of Bath. His undergraduate dissertation compared the relationship between political culture and democratisation in Latvian and Russia. Ammon was awarded an ESRC scholarship to complete an MRes (2009) and PhD (2012) at the University of Glasgow (Central and East European Studies). His research examined discursive practices of ‘Russian speakers’ in Latvia, and involved a year-long research stay in Riga.

Ammon published two peer-reviewed articles from his PhD, notably one with JBS: an analysis of Russian-language newspaper discourse in Latvia. His thesis was re-written as a monograph, published with University of Edinburgh Press in 2016. Subsequently, Ammon has published articles on Russian-speaking identities in Latvia, in Estonia, and in comparative perspective. He has also published research on Russia and Ukraine. From 2016-2023, he was the grant holder for a Erasmus Mundus International Master (worth €3.5 million). This was coordinated between eight international universities, with the University of Tartu (Estonia) as the primary partner. He currently convenes an MSc in Global Security at the University of Glasgow.

Siobhán Hearne is a Wellcome Trust Research Fellow at the University of Manchester. Her research focuses on the history of medicine, healthcare, gender, and sexuality in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. She is the author of Policing Prostitution: Regulating the Lower Classes in Late Imperial Russia (OUP, 2021) and her work has appeared in numerous journals, including Past & Present, Slavic Review, English Historical Review, Gender & History, and Europe-Asia Studies

Harry C. Merritt has been an Editorial Assistant with the Journal of Baltic Studies since 2023. He is currently a Postdoctoral Associate in History and Holocaust Studies at the University of Vermont. Harry earned a Ph.D. in History from Brown University in 2020. Harry’s book, Latvian Soldiers of World War II: Fighting for the Homeland in Nazi and Soviet Service, is currently under contract with Oxford University Press. His work has also been published in the Journal of Modern European History, Nationalities Papers, The Journal of Baltic Studies, and REGION: Regional Studies of Russia, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia.

Josh Hodil is the Westergaard Postdoctoral Fellow at Pomona College where he teaches Scandinavian, Russian, and European history. His research examines the relationship between Russia and Denmark in the early modern period and his current book project focuses on three royal marriage projects negotiated between Moscow and Copenhagen in the seventeenth century.

James Montgomery Baxenfield is a Junior Research Fellow and doctoral candidate at Tallinn University. His doctoral research examines ideas of establishing a Latvian-Lithuanian state during the 19th and 20th centuries. In 2022, he was the recipient of a Baumanis Grant for Creative Research in Baltic Studies from AABS, and a guest co-editor of the special issue “Recognition: de facto and de jure” for Acta Historica Tallinnensia (Vol 28, No. 2). In 2023, he was a visiting fellow at the Herder Institute in Marburg, and he received a Dissertation Grant for Graduate Students from AABS. James also researches the history of American football, particularly in relation to the Baltic region and within Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian diasporas.

Sandra Hagelin is a Junior Research Fellow and PhD Candidate at the Johan Skytte Institute of Political Studies at the University of Tartu. Her research interests concern borders, discourses, and space and identity formation, with a particular focus on the Baltic Sea Region and the narrative constructions of border-related issues in the Nordic and Baltic contexts.