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
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).

Editor
Ammon Cheskin, University of Glasgow
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.

Technical Coordinator
Siobhán Hearne, University of Manchester
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

Editorial Assistant
Harry C. Merritt, University of Vermont
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.

Editorial Assistant
Josh Hodil, Pomona College
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.

Editorial Assistant
James Montgomery Baxenfield, Tallinn University
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.

Editorial Assistant
Sandra Hagelin, University of Tartu
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.

Reviews Editor
Donatas Kupčiunas, University of Cambridge
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:
Centre for Geopolitics,
c/o Peterhouse
attn: Donatas Kupciunas
Trumpington Street,
Cambridge, CB2 1RD
United Kingdom
dk658 [at] cam.ac.uk
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 2022 and 2023 winners were announced in May 2024.