University of Tarku, Finland seeking a visiting research fellow

The Department of Political Science and Contemporary History in the University of Turku, Finland, is looking for a

Visiting research fellow at the post-graduate or post-doctoral level (1-3 months, calendar year 2014)

 

The field of research is Contemporary History, with a specialization in the History of International Relations and European Integration.

The Department of Political Science and Contemporary History is firmly rooted in the traditions of academic research in the following fields: Electoral studies and Finnish domestic politics, Media studies, History and Theory of international relations, Diplomatic History, Cold War Studies, History and Politics of European Integration. Our empirical focus is on Finland and the Baltic/Nordic area, although the Department also hosts the Centre for East-Asian studies. The visiting researcher will be located in the Contemporary History division, more specifically in the History and Politics of European Integration program. Candidates with a background in historical research will be given a priority, while research interests in other fields of the Department and an experience of interdisciplinary work will be considered as assets.

The Department’s goal is to develop teaching and research activities linked to the History of European integration and the role of the Nordic and Baltic countries in this process. The department is one of the main participants in the ReImag-project, which deals with the end of the Cold War and visions of the post-Cold War order in Finland and Estonia (http://www.reimag.fi/team/). The fellow is expected to help in the development of these activities in collaboration with the Department’s staff, through teaching and publication work based on her or his own research.

In addition to accommodation, the fellow will be paid a monthly allowance of 1000 euros. The Department will provide a computer, office space, access to the collections held within the university library, access to web-based services. The Department will also facilitate contacts and fund research trips to Helsinki or Stockholm. The researcher will be provided accommodation in the university guest house, and per honorarium fees for any teaching provided. Costs for travelling to and from Turku, as well as insurance and other fees (including immigration fees) are not covered. For more information, please contact Executive Administrator Auli Kultanen-Leino (aukulta@utu.fi).

To apply, please e-mail a CV, list of publications, and letter of motivation stating the reasons of your application, your research interests, and the period you would prefer for the fellowship to take place, to Senior Lecturer Louis Clerc (loucle@utu.fi). Letters of recommendation can be added to the application. The deadline is March 15^th 2014.

Additional Visiting Fellows with external sources of funding are also welcome to apply. Self-funding fellows may apply at any time.

For more information on the announcement, please contact Senior Lecturer Louis Clerc (loucle@utu.fi). For questions on working and living in Finland, please contact the University’s international desk (iws@utu.fi), or consult the following links: 

 

The University of Turku: http://www.utu.fi/en/

The Division of Contemporary History: http://www.soc.utu.fi/laitokset/poliittinenhistoria/en/

Researchers’ accommodation in Turku: http://www.utu.fi/en/research/mobility/housing.html

The Welcome to Turku-guide: http://www.utu.fi/tiedostot/nakoislehdet/oppaat/Welcome_center/

The Aina Birnitis Dissertation-Completion Fellowship in the Humanities for Latvia

The AABS invites applications for “The Aina Birnitis Scholarship”, which supports a year of research and writing to help advanced graduate students in the humanities in the last year of Ph.D. dissertation writing.  The fellowship is supported by a bequest of Aina Birnitis. 

 

Fellowship Details:

   Stipend:  $20,000, plus $1,000 for university fees

   Tenure:   One year beginning Fall 2014

   Deadline for applications:  15 February 2014

   Notification by: mid-May 2014 

 

Eligibility:  

• The fellowship is open to Ph.D. candidates in the humanities at a university preferably in Latvia, the U.S., Canada, Australia, Great Britain, Germany or Sweden. 
• Applicants must be citizens and permanent residents of Latvia
• Applicants must have completed all requirements for the Ph.D. except the dissertation by the application deadline. 

Eligible Projects

Proposed projects must be in the humanities and related to Latvia or the Latvians.  While preference is given to the study of the Latvian language and history, projects in other areas of the humanities and in some areas of the social sciences, if they show a humanistic focus, will be considered.

 

Full details may be found on the AABS website (Grants):

              http://depts.washington.edu/aabs/

THE CHANGING BALTICS: CULTURES WITHIN CULTURES

The 10^th International Conference of Baltic Literary Scholars in 2014 will be focused on cultural change and cultural diversity within a comparative approach. The conference will take place in Riga, Latvia on September 28-30,  2014.

Conference of Baltic Literary Scholars has established itself as a continuing tradition in the Baltic academic space since 1995. During this time, many new insights have been developed by bringing together Estonian,  Latvian and Lithuanian scholars and discussing topics both current for the whole literary space and distinctive for each country. The emphasis on
theoretical approach has proved itself to be a productive one as studies in the Baltic memory show. In the 2014 conference, the organizers have decided to develop the previous tradition further, by turning attention to the Baltic experience as an example not only for theoretical reflections on topics such as memory, identity and cultural translation, but for the comparative approach as well.

The primary interest of the conference is focused on the phenomenon of cultural diversity, on the growing awareness that culture has existed and exists in plural. The main focus of the conference will be to develop a broader and more general view on cultural change that challenges the tendency of singularizing culture and social reality.

Over the last decades, the Baltic example has been mentioned as a vibrant site of both merging and conflicting cultural identities. Reflecting upon the Baltic experience prompts asking what lies behind the repeatedly non-problematically used denominations: “national culture”, “national society”, “national literature”, or even further: “modern art”, “Western modernity”, etc. To what extent can we observe the Baltic example as a unique situation – or does it rather mirror larger patterns of cultural change as well as awareness of those changes and their capacity to produce new meanings?

Answers to these questions could be sought by developing the so called border thinking and by looking for diverse cultural representation forms, be it the relationship between one’s own and the unfamiliar (different), the dominant and the subdued, the central and the peripheral, the global and the local, the collective and the individual, the official and the unofficial, the accepted and the rejected, etc.

Processes occurring in socio-cultural border areas – negotiations, inclusion/exclusion, usurpation, borrowing, interpreting – and resulting in mixed or hybrid cultural forms are not exclusively characteristic for the Baltics, however the Baltics provide a specific example of the growing sense of an in-betweenness that can serve as a starting point for further discussions on the role literature and art plays in responding to global and postmodern challenges.

We are inviting proposals for paper presentations, focusing on these topics not only in literary representations, but in a broader context of cultural production as well.

In order to develop a broader view on cultural diversity, the organizers encourage submissions that approach this theme from the comparative perspective by juxtaposing or comparing the Baltic experience with other European regions thus creating new insights into exploring traveling ideas in European intellectual space.

Interdisciplinary perspectives are particularly welcome since all these topics in themselves stretch across several disciplines: history, literary studies, political sciences, folkloristics, ethnology, gender/queer studies, anthropology, sociology.

Please submit your 300-word abstracts by November 15th, 2013.

In addition prepare the following info:

• title,
• professional affiliation,
• e-mail address,
• phone number,
• AV requirements,
• a short biographical note

 

E-mail: balticconference2014@gmail.com

Your participation in the conference will be confirmed by December 16th, 2013.

Papers should be delivered in English.

 

Conference fees

Until May 30th 2014
Early-bird registration fee 60 EUR
Student fee 40 EUR

From May 31st to August 31 2014
Regular participation fee 80 EUR
Student fee 50 EUR

The fee includes:

• welcome reception
• conference materials
• conference meals and coffee-breaks

The full text of your conference paper, after being submitted to the editorial process, will be published in the post-conference volume

 

Should any questions arise, please do not hesitate to contact us!

 

Conference Committee

Benedikts Kalnačs, Institute of Literature, Folklore and Art (University of Latvia)

Eva Eglāja, Institute of Literature, Folklore and Art (University of Latvia)

Pauls Daija, Institute of Literature, Folklore and Art (University of Latvia)

Dace Bula, Institute of Literature, Folklore and Art (University of Latvia)

Rita Treija, Institute of Literature, Folklore and Art (University of Latvia)

Anneli Mihkelev, Under and Tuglas Literature Centre of the Estonian Academy of Sciences; Tallinn University

Aušra Jurgutienė,  Institute of Lithuanian Literature and Folklore

New Book Series by Tartu University Press

Tartu University Press is pleased to launch its new book series on Politics and Society in the Baltic Sea Region with the first book by Anne Kaun on “Being a Young Citizen in Estonia: An Exploration of Young People’s Civic and Media Experiences” (PSBSR Series Vol. 1, 2013).

To this day a considerable amount of research on contemporary social and political issues in the countries surrounding the Baltic Sea remains accessible only to a very limited number of Baltic experts due to mostly linguistic, but also to distribution and general publishing constraints. Most interesting analytical findings and relevant conceptual discussions about human development, public policy, socio-economic challenges, media discourses and political culture in the region do not get the broad international academic attention they deserve. The new series is therefore interested to publish especially the work of young scholars, recent PhDs and post-doctoral researchers, who want to get their in-depth analysis published in a high-quality and internationally distributed outlet. Open to a wide range of thematic, conceptual and methodological approaches, the Series seeks to become a forum for excellent social science scholarship that will enrich international knowledge and understanding of the Baltic Sea region. The series welcomes manuscripts in either English or German in all social science disciplines, including also economics and legal studies with political or social relevance. Likewise, studies in history will be considered if they take a conceptually informed approach and clearly demonstrate the relevance of the particular historical inquiry for our understanding of contemporary politics/society.

In addition to international peer-review of book manuscripts, high scholarly standards are ensured by an international editorial board of distinguished scholars from around the Baltic Sea. Morover, all series titles are being distributed through Open Access repositories such as the OAPEN and DOAB databases as well as in printed form through the publisher directly.

For more information, please visit the Series website at www.tyk.ee/PSBSR or contact the Series Editor,

Dr. Eva-Clarita Pettai

Institute of Government and Politics

University of Tartu

Lossi 36

51003 Tartu, Estonia

Email: ecpettai@ut.ee

Diaspora Studies Summer School, June 2013

Diaspora Studies Summer School in Jūrmala, Latvia

Date: June 25-29, 2013                                                         

Venue: The school will operate in the seaside resort of Jūrmala (25 km from Riga), in the Hotel SIVA, 71 Dubultu prospekts,  Jūrmala, http://www.hotelsiva.lv

An interdisciplinary summer school focused on diaspora issues is being organized by the University of Latvia Foundation, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Representation of the European Commission in Latvia and the European Latvian Association. The school will gather Latvian and foreign researchers as well as Ph.D. students dealing with migration and diaspora issues.

June 25 : Arrival of participants

20:00 Welcome reception

Welcoming by the Ambassador at Large at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Latvia                         Dr. Rolands Lappuķe

 

June 26

9.30     Prof. Rainer Münz (Head of the Research & Knowledge Center at Erste Group Bank AG in            Austria, senior fellow at the Hamburg Institute of International economics, and member of the          European Council’s Reflection group EU Horizon 2020-2030)

Global trends in engaging diasporas – What can we learn from each other?

11.00   Coffee break

11.30   Prof. Mark G. Boyle  (Department of Geography, National University of Ireland – Maynooth)

Diaspora strategies: Overview and the case of  Ireland

13.00   Lunch

14.30   Workshop 1: Mainstreaming European diasporas, demography and migration issues in the EU policies.

            Moderators: Rolands Lappuķe and Mihails Hazans

             The workshop  aims at identifying possible recommendations for EU policies and monitoring tools concerning diasporas, demography and migration (on the background of the Latvian Presidency of the European Union in 2015). The issues include (but are not limited to) social rights, portability of those rights to other states, co-operation in Justice and Home Affairs, possible EU-wide mechanisms to compensate human capital, demographic and economic losses of sending countries.

16.15   Coffee break

 

16.30   Workshop 2: Political and civic representation and participation of the diaspora in the    social and political processes of the origin as well as destination countries.                               Moderators (TBC): Aldis Austers (chairman of the European Latvian Association) and                                  Inga Spriņģe (founder and director of the Baltic Center for Investigative Journalism Re: Baltica)

19.00   Dinner

June 27

9.30      Dr. Dace Dzenovska ( Senior Researcher / Marie Curie Fellow, Center on Migration,        Policy and Society, University of Oxford, UK)

Diaspora work in postsocialist Europe

11.00   Coffee break

11.30   Prof.  Mihails Hazans (Faculty of Economics, University of Latvia; Research fellow at IZA –           Institute for the Study of Labor, Bonn, Germany)

            Emigration from Latvia in the 21^st century: Patterns and consequences.

13.00   Lunch

14.30   Prof. Andris Straumanis (Department of Journalism, University of Wisconsin-River Falls, USA)

The role of digital and mass media in the life of a diaspora

15.15    Workshop 3 : Culture and identity – language, medias, museums…                                   Moderators: Andris Straumanis and Mārtiņš Kaprāns

The workshop will discuss the role of cultural resources in diaspora politics, particularly highlighting opportunities and challenges for the sending countries. Likewise, the workshop will address the cultural practices of diaspora that institutionalize assimilation, self-segregation or transnationalism as alternative identity-building strategies.

17.30-18.30     Dr. Mārtiņš Kaprāns (MOBILITAS Post-doctoral Research Fellow, University of                     Tartu, Estonia)

            Transnational memory: agents and practices

19.00   Dinner

June 28

9.30    Kathleen Newland  (Co-Founder  and program director at Migration Policy                                 institute, Washington, USA) – TBC

                        Creating bridges: Diaspora Engagement in the Economic development of the                               sending country

                        (or: Building institutions and reducing barriers)

11.00   Coffee break

11.30   Dr. Rita Kaša  (assistant professor at Stockholm School of Economics in Riga)

High skill migration between  EU15 and EU8+2 and student financial aid strategies

13.00   Lunch

14.30-16.00     Roundtable

“Financial support for students to foster the movement of intellectual capital (“brain circulation”), in order to avoid a “brain drain”. Higher education policy in conditions of intensive emigration”                                                                                                                Moderators: Rita Kaša and Mihails Hazans

 

16.30-18.00     Looking Forward:

                        (i) Perspectives of the Diaspora Studies Centre at the University of Latvia,                       (ii) Presentation of the project „Latvian emigrant communities: National        identity, transnational relationships and diaspora policy”.

19.00   dinner

June 29

Departure of the participants

**********************************************************************************

For on-line registration, please go to

http://www.fonds.lv/vasara-2013/konferences/diaspora-studies-summer-school/on-line-registration/

Invited speakers are also supposed to register.

Kindly note that all fields in the registration form are required. For the field “Level”, recommended entries are: “Master student”, “Applicant for PhD studies”, “PhD student”, “PhD candidate”, “PostDoc”; if neither of these applies, just enter your job title (e.g. “Professor”, “Director”, “Researcher” etc). If you are not a PhD student and your affiliation is not a university, please write in your affiliation in the “University” field, and your field of research as the “Study field”.

Currently, the registration form includes (mistakenly) field “State”; if it is not removed, please fill this field with the name of the country where your university (or other main affiliation) is located.

The registration form will request to upload a motivation letter; kindly prepare it in advance. The allowed size of the letter is “no more than 500 – 700 words”, but 200 – 300 words is enough. For invited speakers, just one sentence (e.g. “I have been invited as a speaker”) is sufficient, but technically it should be uploaded as a document (it is not possible to write it in the field).

If you have questions or in case of technical problems with registration, please send an e-mail to the following address: diaspora@fonds.lv.

Participation fee (does not apply to invited speakers): 21 LVL (30 euro). If necessary, a scholarship may be offered to cover the participation fee.

JBS Trend Analysis, 2000-2012: Geography (Part 2 & 3 of 4)

Journal of Baltic Studies

Trend Analysis Report, 2000-2012

Kelly K. Nelson, Assistant Editor

(Part 2 & 3 of 4)

Data

Data were taken from all articles (not including book reviews) published in the Journal of Baltic Studies from 2000 (Vol. 31, Issue 1) through 2012 (Vol. 43, Issue 4) for a total of 13 years and 284 articles.

Article’s Country of Origin

The data collected for this category were based on the author’s home institution. If there were multiple authors, each author’s institution had their respective country recorded in the count.

Estonia had the most contributors (74), more than double the contributors from Latvia and Lithuania combined (both tied at 35). The country with the second-highest contribution rate was the United States (59). As shown by the graph entitled “Top Five Contributors by Country,” the rate of American authors has not again reached the peak it did in 2000-2001, but it has remained at a steady average of about 4 authors between 2002 and 2012. Of note, a sizable number of American contributors are Baltic by birth, or are the children of Baltic immigrants.

Conversely, the rate of Estonian authors has steadily increased since 2000, with an outlier spike in 2009 owing to a Special Issue on Estonia (2009, Issue 1). The rate of Lithuanian and Latvian authors remained flat through the decade, save for a spike in Lithuanian authorship in 2012. This is owed to a Special Issue on linguistics (2012, Issue 2).

Other countries whose total number of authors is greater than 10 include the UK (29), Finland (15), Germany (12), and Sweden (10).

Those countries with a relatively small number of contributors (less than 10) are Canada, Russia, Australia, Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, Poland, Denmark, Ireland, Norway, Israel, and Japan.  

Countries Covered

Of the three Baltic States, Estonia has the greatest number of articles dedicated to it (91). As shown by the graph below, these articles show a slight upward trend. Latvia has been flat through the decade, save for a period of increased activity between 2005 and 2007. Lithuania also sees little change in activity, remaining flat through the given period—save for a 2001 high of 8 articles.

After Estonia, articles discussing the Baltic Region as a whole receive the most attention with 85 total articles.

The non-Baltic state with the most coverage is Russia (19) because of the Soviet occupation. Many articles beyond these 19, however, directly or indirectly discuss the former Soviet Union and Bolshevik influences because of its integral role in shaping the region.

Perhaps the best outlier country recorded is Japan: a 2005 (Issue 4) article by a Japanese author discussed the relationship between the Baltic States and Japan during the Inter-War Period. All other articles only discuss Europe, the US, or Canada.

JBS Trend Analysis, 2000-2012: Author Gender & Co-Authorship (Part 1 of 4)

Journal of Baltic Studies

Trend Analysis Report, 2000-2012

Kelly K. Nelson, Assistant Editor

(Part 1 of 4)

Data

Data was taken from all articles (not including book reviews) published in the Journal of Baltic Studies from 2000 (Vol. 31, Issue 1) through 2012 (Vol. 43, Issue 4) for a total of 13 years and 284 articles.

Author Gender

Male authorship has remained steady since 2000, maintaining a consistent average of 15 male authors per year over the 13 years covered. Female authorship, however, has seen a steady increase, as indicated by the accompanying graphs. From 2000 to 2006, the average number of female authors per year was 9.7. From 2007 through 2012, that average increases to 14.8. This number was skewed upwards due to two years (2009 and 2010) of unusually high female authorship—21 and 22 authors, respectively.

Male authors outnumbered female in eight of the 13 years analyzed (2000, 2001, 2002, 2004, 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2011).

Please note that the above numbers include instances of co-authorship of articles. This phenomenon is captured in the “stacked” graph.

Multiple Authorship

For the first seven years, the rate of article co-authorship remained relatively flat: occasional spikes are seen, but the trend line falls back to (or below) the average of three per year. 2007 was the only year to see no articles with multiple authors. 2008-2012, however, saw a spike to an average five co-authored articles per year. 2009 saw the highest number of all the years in question, with nine co-authored articles.  This spike may be attributed to two “Special Issues” that year, one of which marked the 20-year anniversary of the fall of communism in the region.

The analysis also includes a look at trends in author nationality, disciplines covered, and countries/regions of focus. These shall be posted in the coming weeks. 

In Memoriam: John Hiden 1940-2012

It is impossible in the space of a short essay to do full justice to the life and work of John Hiden, whose untimely passing on 10 August 2012 has deprived us of one of the leading lights in Baltic Studies. Professor of European History at the University of Bradford, where he worked for more than 32 years, John was also Senior Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Glasgow from 2003. In the course of his career he forged contacts and enduring friendships across Europe, North America and beyond that are too numerous to list here. It suffices to say that nearly everyone who has worked in our field since the 1980s will have known John Hiden personally, heard him speak at conferences or familiarised themselves with at least some of his extensive published works on Baltic themes. Many more people across the world will know John as a leading authority on German history, where he authored many more works on aspects of the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich.

It was the study of German foreign policy that first drew John Hiden to Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania back in the 1960s. His PhD, awarded by the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University of London in 1970 examined the place of the Baltic states within Weimar German Ostpolitik. The study broke new ground by seeking to differentiate fundamentally the foreign policies of the Weimar Republic from those later pursued by Nazi Germany. This perspective meant that John could already then appreciate the significance of the liberal Baltic German politician and international minority activist Paul Schiemann, a figure to whom he vowed to return in the future. Eventually published in 2004 and awarded the AABS Book Prize two years later, John’s widely-acclaimed biography of Schiemann was arguably the crowning achievement of a long and distinguished career.

John Hiden defended his PhD during the depths of the Cold War, at a time when Baltic independence must have appeared to many to be a lost cause. The eventual publication of the thesis (as The Baltic States and Weimar Ostpolitik) in 1987, however, coincided with the start of the remarkable set of events that would see Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania reclaim their place as sovereign states on the map of Europe just four years later. With discussion of the Baltic case still largely subsumed within Soviet studies, John became one of a small group of scholars able to situate the process of change within a broader European perspective. Together with Alexander Loit, he edited the proceedings of two landmark symposia held in Stockholm during the mid-late 1980s, which appeared as The Baltic States in International Relations between the Two World Wars (1987) and Contact or Isolation? Soviet-Western Relations in the Interwar Period (1991). With Patrick Salmon he wrote The Baltic Nations and Europe (1991, updated 1994), which remains a standard reference text for courses dealing with the international relations of the Baltic Sea region. The work ably demonstrates how the fate of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania during 1939-40 was inextricably bound up with that of Europe as a whole, arguing that the existence of these ‘small’ countries (so often dismissed as irrelevant by representatives of the so-called Great Powers) should in fact be understood as a ‘European necessity’. A further key work of this period, co-edited with Thomas Lane, was The Baltic and the Outbreak of the Second World War (1992).

It was with Thomas Lane that John Hiden ran the Baltic Research Unit (BRU), which he founded at Bradford University in 1988. In an era in which UK universities are increasingly obsessed with measuring the non-academic ‘impact’ of research, it is worth recalling the very substantial role that BRU had to play in shaping British government policy towards the re-emerging Baltic states and making UK business circles properly aware of the opportunities afforded by these new markets. Through constant visits, conferences and work on the BRU’s acclaimed Baltic Briefing John came into contact with many of the leading political and academic figures of the new independence era. Lennart Meri, with whom John worked to arrange an early economic audit of Estonia by Bradford City Council, remained a close acquaintance, as did Mart Laar. Jüri Luik, Einars Repše, Normans Penke and Leonidas Donskis all spent periods of time at BRU during its 13-year existence. Regular briefings at the Foreign Office meant that John was also well-known to everyone who has served as a UK Ambassador to Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania during the two decades since the restoration of diplomatic relations with these countries. John’s contribution to advancing the academic study of the Baltic countries and assisting in their reconstruction was later duly acknowledged through the award of the Order of Grand Duke Gediminas and the Order of the Cross of Terra Mariana by the Presidents of Lithuania and Estonia respectively. He was also awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Klaipeda and was appointed a member of the Latvian Historical Commission and the Baltische Historische Kommission.

In the course of the 1990s, BRU became the focal point for Baltic Studies within the UK, attracting two new externally-funded academic posts and creating (in 2001) the UK’s first dedicated Masters Programme in Baltic Studies. This built on the earlier highly successful MA programme in East European Studies which John Hiden established and ran for many years. During this period John also supervised or examined the PhD theses of a good number of the current younger generation of Baltic Studies scholars in the UK and beyond, whilst also convening the weekly PhD discussion workshop at Bradford’s Department of European Studies. An inspiring supervisor, John brought genuine enthusiasm to these discussions and was always ready with constructive advice and encouragement to younger academic colleagues. From the mid-1990s onwards John’s research work focused increasingly on his biography of Schiemann, but he also maintained his interest in historic and contemporary aspects of international relations, contributing actively to a transnational research network on Baltic Sea regional identity (1999-2001) and later to a co-edited work (with Vahur Made and David Smith) on The Baltic Question during the Cold War (2008). With Patrick Salmon, he also undertook the gargantuan task of jointly editing nine volumes of British Foreign Office documents on Scandinavia and the Baltic states, which appeared in1996.

The work of BRU at Bradford was sadly curtailed in 2001, when financial cuts brought the closure of the internationally renowned Department of European Studies. The unit was, however, later reconstituted at the University of Glasgow, to which John was attached as a senior research fellow in January 2003. In the years that followed, John brought his customary energy and enthusiasm to the development of Baltic Studies at Glasgow. He generously donated to the University library an extensive archive of materials accumulated over the previous decade or more, and this is still much used by student and visiting researchers. John was also instrumental in the start of discussions that led to Glasgow’s receipt of an externally-funded lectureship in Estonian language society and culture. From 2003-2012 John worked on a research project analysing the practice of non-territorial cultural autonomy in the Baltic states during the 1920s and its relevance to wider debates on democratisation, minority rights and European integration in Europe past and present. The findings are presented in the co-authored (with David Smith) work Ethnic Diversity and the Nation State, published in May 2012. As part of this project John participated in policy briefings on cultural autonomy to the Romanian government and the Council of Europe Venice Commission.

As Emeritus Professor at Bradford from 2001, John Hiden also continued his long-standing collaborative work with Martyn Housden on German and Baltic History. A 2008 co-authored work, Neighbours or Enemies?, drew together both strands, looking at the relationship between the German state and German minorities of Central and Eastern Europe in all of its historical manifestations. It was fitting that the two institutions, Bradford and Glasgow, should collaborate to produce a co-edited Festschrift (Forgotten Pages in Baltic History) in honour of John’s career, which was presented at the Latvian Embassy in London in October 2011. It meant a great deal to John that his wife Juliet and children Hugo and Jessica as well as other family members were able to join him on this occasion, alongside many other friends and colleagues from down the years. He will be missed enormously by everyone who knew him and had the privilege of working with him.

David Smith

University of Uppsala and University of Glasgow