Journal of Baltic Studies

Journal of Baltic Studies (JBS), the official journal of AABS, is a vital source of scholarship for those engaged in Baltic state and Baltic Sea region studies. JBS is a peer-reviewed, multidisciplinary journal published on a quarterly basis that aims at progressing and disseminating knowledge about the political, social, economic, and cultural life – both past and present – of the Baltic states and the Baltic Sea region. JBS seeks high-quality original articles and review of broad scholarly interest that advance knowledge of the Baltic states and Baltic Sea region.

Editorial Board

Editor-in-Chief

Matthew Kott, Uppsala University

Matthew Kott is a historian based at the Institute for Russian and Eurasian Studies (IRES) at Uppsala University in Sweden. 

Matthew has a long relationship with JBS. It was one of his favorite journals to browse in the library stacks as an undergraduate at Carleton University in Ottawa, and JBS articles appear in the bibliography of his undergraduate thesis on the Latvian Bolshevik, Pēteris Stučka. He started his own subscription to JBS as an AABS Baltic member, while working at the Occupation Museum in Riga. As a doctoral student at Oxford, his first peer-reviewed publication was an article in JBS coauthored with Heinrihs Strods on the March 1949 Deportations, which remains one of his most widely cited works. In 2009, now a researcher at Uppsala University, he took on the role of Reviews Editor for JBS, a position that he enjoyed so much, he held it for almost a decade. In 2017, he fulfilled a long-standing dream of being appointed the Editor of JBS.

In addition to his work on history and contemporary politics of Latvia, Matthew’s other research and teaching expertise includes topics such as the genocide of Europe’s Romani minorities, the Nazi occupation of Norway, and then history of racial ideology in Northern Europe. Together with Terje Emberland, he wrote the groundbreaking study of the SS in Norway, Himmlers Norge: Nordmenn i det storgermankse prosjekt (Aschehoug, 2012). He is a recognized expert for the Latvian Science Council, and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in the UK.

Editor

Michael Loader, University of Glasgow

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).

Technical Editor

Catherine Gibson, University of Tartu

Catherine Gibson is a lecturer in East European and Eurasian Studies at the Johan Skytte Institute of Political Studies at the University of Tartu. Her research focuses on the history of cartography, mapping, and geographical sciences in the Russian Empire in the 19th and 20th centuries, and the independent states of Estonia and Latvia.

Editorial Coordinator

Liisi Veski, University of Tartu

Liisi Veski is a research fellow in the history of political thought at the Skytte Institute, University of Tartu. Her current project, “The school for democracy: co-operation, civil society, and intrastate federalism in Estonian intellectual history, 1900–1940,” is funded by the Estonian Research Council.

A man with curly hair and a beard smiles at the camera

Editorial Coordinator

Harry Merritt, University of Vermont

Harry Merritt is a Post-doctoral Fellow in History and Holocaust Studies at the Department of History, University of Vermont. He specialises in the social, cultural, and political impacts of World War II on Latvia. 

Reviews Editor

Liisi Esse, Stanford University

Liisi Esse is Curator for Estonian and Baltic Studies at Stanford University Libraries. She also serves as the Administrative Executive Officer of the AABS. 

Liisi earned her Ph.D. from the University of Tartu in 2016. Her doctoral dissertation, “Eesti sõdurid Esimeses maailmasõjas: sõjakogemus ja selle sõjajärgne tähendus” (“Estonian Soldiers in the First World War: The War Experience and its Post-War Meaning”) relies on Estonian soldiers’ letters, diaries, and memoirs, as well as materials of veterans’ organizations, and analyzes various elements of the war experience of Estonian soldiers who served in the Russian Army during the First World War. She has also written several articles on Estonian soldiers’ war experience and egodocuments.

Editorial Assistant

Emma Rönngren, Uppsala University

Emma Rönngren is a PhD candidate at the Institute for Russian and Eurasian Studies (IRES) and the Department of Informatics and Media (IM) at Uppsala University in Sweden. Her research project explores the reception of Russia’s strategic narratives among young Russian speakers in Latvia from a media perspective. The doctoral project is set to finish in 2024. Emma’s research interests include strategic communication, international relations, public diplomacy, and the post-Soviet space. She has previously lived and worked in Russia, Ukraine, Armenia, and Kazakhstan.

Contact Information

Email:
jbs [at] ires.uu.se

Postal address:
Journal of Baltic Studies
Institute for Russian and Eurasian Studies
Uppsala University
Box 514
SE-751 20 Uppsala
SWEDEN
Tel. +46 18 471 1630

About the Journal of Baltic Studies

Published quarterly by the AABS, the annual fee for both membership in the Association and a subscription to JBS is $60.00, $25.00 for full-time students, and $35.00 for emeritus members. Members of the Association receive a free personal subscription to the Journal.

Journal of Baltic Studies is noted in American Bibliographical Center, Bibliographie Linguistique/Linguistic Bibliography (BL), Bibliography of the History of Art, Current Contents / Arts & Humanities, Historical Abstracts, MLA Abstracts of the Modern Languages Association, SCOPUS, Thomson Reuters Arts & Humanities Citation Index® (A&HCI), Thomson Reuters Social Sciences Citation Index® (SSCI).

The Association acknowledges with gratitude the support of the IRES Institute for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Uppsala University, towards the editorial functions of JBS.

Manuscripts 

All submissions should be made online at the Journal of Baltic Studies ScholarOne Manuscripts site. New users should first create an account. Once a user is logged onto the site submissions should be made via the Author Centre. For publication policies, please consult the Style Guide. For more information, see Instructions for Authors page.

Book Reviews 

All book review requests and copies of books to be reviewed should be sent to the Journal’s Book Reviews Editor:

Liisi Esse
352A Green Library
Stanford, CA 94305-6004
USA
liisi.esse [at] stanford.edu

Vilis Vītols Article Prize

The Vilis Vītols annual award of $500 is presented to the author of the best article in a given year of the Journal of Baltic Studies. The best article is selected by a committee appointed by the AABS board. Priority is given to articles that encompass more than one Baltic country and thus expressly represent Baltic Studies.

The 2020 and 2021 winners were announced in May 2022.

Journal of Baltic Studies 54/2 Now Available Online

The second 2023 issue of Journal of Baltic Studies (Vol 54, Issue 2) is now available online. The issue features twelve articles spanning a variety of disciplines, subjects, and eras, together weaving a rich tapestry of Baltic Studies today. The journal issue...