Conference “Historical and Memory Challenges in the Baltic Region during the 20th and 21st Centuries: Transformations, Structures, and Agency”

On 15 and 16 October, the Institute of Latvian History at the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Latvia will host the international academic conference “Historical and Memory Challenges in the Baltic Region during the 20th and 21st Centuries: Transformations, Structures, and Agency”. The conference will take place in the University of Latvia’s Sapere Aude Auditorium at 4 Kalpaka Boulevard, Riga. It will bring together more than 25 scholars from Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania and Germany.

Over the two days, four thematic panels and four plenary lectures will address historical research in Latvia and Lithuania, the changing practice of history in the digital age, and social transformation in Estonia. Mārtiņš Mintaurs (University of Latvia) will examine the perspectives, challenges, and outcomes of writing history in Latvia since 1991. Aurimas Švedas (Lithuanian Institute of History) will discuss contemporary perspectives on Lithuanian history, focusing on research problems and methodological approaches. Haralds Matulis (Institute of Literature, Folklore and Art of the University of Latvia) will explore what it means to be a “digital historian” in 2026, while Triin Vihalemm (University of Tartu) will offer a sociological perspective on the transformation of Estonian society since the 1990s.

 

The conference welcomes representatives of the humanities and social sciences, memory institutions, the creative industries, non-governmental organizations, the media, and other fields involved in researching and communicating history and collective memory.

The conference is organized as part of the State Research Program project on the history of twentieth- and twenty-first-century Latvia by the Institute of Latvian History at the Faculty of Humanities, University of Latvia, in cooperation with the Lithuanian Institute of History and the Estonian Institute of Historical Memory.