Research Fellow in East European and Eurasian Studies The Johan Skytte Institute of Political Studies at the University of Tartu invites applications for two 30-month postdoctoral Research Fellow positions within the ERC-funded project Empire of Solidari...

🗓️ Deadline: 4 May
👉 Further details and application portal: candidate.recrur.com/public/jobad...
🔗 Project website: empsolid.ee

The positions are based at the Johan Skytte Institute of Political Studies, University of Tartu, with a preferred start date of 1 September 2026

I'm looking for two postdocs/research fellows (2.5 years, 100%) to join the #ERC project EMPSOLID.

Preference for candidates with expertise on the Caucasus and/or Central Asia🌏, but applications focusing on other regions of the Romanov Empire are also encouraged.

We are grateful to the editors of Slavic Review for turning our article into a critical forum discussion and to the three reviewers for sharing their reflections
www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

The first EMPSOLID article, co-authored w Anton Kotenko, is out! We wrote the piece to foreground horizontal entanglements as a distinctive approach to the spatial history of the Romanov Empire, synthesising current research and our archival findings to suggest future directions tinyurl.com/p3ehjbja

We are grateful to the editors of Slavic Review for turning our article into a critical forum discussion and to the three reviewers for sharing their reflections:
www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

We've just launched the cfp for the 10th anniversary Tartu Conference on East European and Eurasian Studies, 10–12 June 2026!

Theme: "Global Flows and Frictions in Eastern Europe and Eurasia"
Cfp: tartuconference.ut.ee
Deadline for submissions: 25 Jan 2026

We look forward to seeing you in Tartu!

Rural History of Soviet Central Asia: Land Reform and Agricultural Change in Early Soviet Uzbekistan Beatrice Penati’s new book Rural History of Soviet Central Asia: Land Reform and Agricultural Change in Early Soviet Uzbekistan (published with Brill, 2025) provides a comprehensive account of early S...

We have a great new author interview on the website. Beatrice Penati spoke with our editor Hanna Matt about her new book 'Rural History of Soviet Central Asia: Land Reform and Agricultural Change in Early Soviet Uzbekistan' www.peripheralhistories.co.uk/post/rural-h...

ICCEES XI World Congress 2025 The ICCEES XI World Congress is being hosted by UCL in London in 2025, and will run from Monday 21st July to Friday 25th July. There is a large and diverse range of panels and roundtables to view, ei...

Heading to #ICCEES2025 next week? We have put together a list of sessions that may be of interest to Peripheral Histories? readers here: www.peripheralhistories.co.uk/post/iccees-...

Call for Papers: Third Annual Baltic Study Group Workshop, The University of Glasgow, 30-31 October 2025. Please see below for full details.

Please send a 250-word abstract and a 150-word bio note by 1 August 2025 to baseesbalticstudiesgroup@gmail.com

This spring I've had the pleasure of working with Michela, an #Erasmus+ intern, who has been doing a fabulous job helping to copy documents in the Estonian National Archives!

🎙️ Interview Time with Michela Quercetti!

"I'm not a historian, but I'm enchanted by the archives!"

Michela shares her experience working on the #EMPSOLID project, diving into 100-year-old documents, Romanov-era charity networks, and Estonian archives.

📸 Archive photo + full quote in the post!

For those who will miss out – don't worry! 🙂 We are planning to post it online after the event!

Heading to Cambridge this week for the Conference on Baltic Studies in Europe? Here's a sneak peek of our 📹 documentary film 🎬 with the wonderful Maarja Merivoo-Parro and Sanita Reinsone for our panel on solidarity in the Baltics in the long 20th century! 📆 25 April 15:30
@balticstudies.bsky.social

💡Our PhD call is now also available at EURAXESS!

You can find a thorough description of the position and of the application process here: euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs/333981

#EMPSOLID #EMPSOLIDnews #PhD

🌟 Fully Funded PhD Position 🌟

4-year PhD position at the University of Tartu in the history of solidarity in the Romanov Empire.

Happy to chat with prospective applicants about their ideas or questions – please feel free to reach out!

More info in the link below ⬇️

Just back from archival trips to Riga for my new project on intra-imperial philanthropy in the Romanov Empire. Staggered but excited by how much material there is to work with!

A PhD position will be opening soon, so stay tuned!

I am delighted to begin working on my new ERC-funded project on intra-imperial charitable solidarities in the Romanov Empire. Check out our just-launched website for further details: www.empsolid.ee.
More info about PhD & postdoc opportunities is coming soon!

We are hosting a workshop on migration and mobilities in Eurasia at Manchester in March - CFP below - feel free to get in touch if you have any questions. Bursaries for UK travel available.

A reminder that there is still time to submit proposals for the Tartu Conference (cfp deadline 20 Jan)!

National education and teaching history in interwar Estonian schools Mann LoperThe establishment of Estonia’s independent statehood in 1918 took the political and cultural freedom of Estonians to an entirely new level. Under the Russian Empire, imperial policies and th...

Our guest-edited Baltic series draws to a close with Mann Loper's fascinating post on the establishment of national education and the development of the history school curriculum in interwar Estonia: www.peripheralhistories.co.uk/post/nationa...

Breaking out of the Baltic Periphery?: The Global Ambitions of the Duchy of Courland in the Seventeenth Century John FreemanThe early modern eastern Baltic Sea has often been considered, with some criticism, a global periphery in comparison to the oceanic ‘core’. Nevertheless, a handful of eastern Baltic territ...

First up in our new Baltic series we have John Freeman's post on attempts to de-peripheralize the early modern Eastern Baltic through Atlantic colonisation www.peripheralhistories.co.uk/post/breakin...

Peripheral Sexualities? LGBT (Studies) in Lithuania – a conversation with Rasa Navickaitė Rasa Kamarauskaitė (RK)As part of the series that discusses ‘periphery’ in the Baltic states, Lithuanian sexuality scholar Rasa Navickaitė (RN) challenges Western-focused approaches to Baltic sexualit...

Our second post in the Baltic series is an interview with sexualities scholar Rasa Navickaitė on LGBT studies in Lithuania www.peripheralhistories.co.uk/post/periphe...

Over the next few weeks, we will have a new series of posts on the website curated by the @basees.bsky.social Study Group on the Baltic States. We will share each post as its published and the whole series will eventually be grouped here: www.peripheralhistories.co.uk/baltic

Congrats! Really looking forward to reading this!

Please don’t hesitate to get in touch if you need help finding participants to form a panel or if you have any ideas for roundtable topics that you would like to propose, and I would be happy to help facilitate!

📢 CfP: 9th Annual Tartu Conference on East European and Eurasian Studies, 11-13 June 2025
🔹 Conference theme: "Resilience and Adaptation in Times of Adversity" & our plenary speaker is Kate Brown (MIT)
👉 For more information & submission of abstracts, please see: sisu.ut.ee/tartuconfere...

Join us in December for the next instalment of the archives and libraries online workshop! Harry Merritt and I will share some tips on working with materials in Estonia and Latvia.

Could you please add me to the list? Thanks!

Could I please join? Thanks!