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.

Michael Loader received his PhD from King’s College London in 2015. He has held postdoctoral fellowships at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow (2016-2017) and the Institute of Russian and Eurasian Studies at Uppsala University in Sweden (2017-2020).

Michael is currently a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellow at the University of Glasgow (2020-2023).

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.

Liisi Esse is Associate 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.
Liisi is a member of the ASEEES Committee on Libraries and Information Resources and the Baltic Heritage Network.

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.