BALTIC STUDENT CONFERENCE BRIDGES IN THE BALTICS
Warsaw 2022
The 9th Baltic Student Conference “Bridges in the Baltics” was held in Warsaw, Poland on September 23-24, 2022, and was organized by the Subdepartment of Baltic studies at the University of Warsaw. The conference hosted 51 students from 9 countries. In addition to student presentations, 4 plenary lectures were held by guest speakers.
As in previous years, the aim of the conference was to bring together students interested in Baltic studies and give them the possibility to meet, present their academic work, learn from each other and make new contacts. Everyone currently pursuing a Bachelor’s, Master’s or PhD degree at any university in the Baltic states or elsewhere was invited.
Plenary speakers
Baiba Witajewska-Baltvilka (PhD) is Research Fellow at the Institute for Structural Research in Warsaw and Global Climate Forum in Berlin working on political aspects of energy transition and climate change mitigation. Since 2022 she is also Policy Coordinator at the Latvian Fund for Nature. Earlier Baiba has worked in the field of EU policy evaluation and was also lecturer of Latvian language and culture at the University of Warsaw. She holds a PhD in Political Science from European University Institute.
Łukasz Sommer (PhD) works as an assistant professor in the Finnish Studies section (within the Department of Hungarian Studies) at the University of Warsaw. His main area of research is the cultural history of Finland and the region, with special focus on nationalism, modern processes of identity building and ideologies of language. His PhD dissertation on national language debates in 19th-century Finland was published in 2009. Currently he is working on a study in the history of ideologies of Finno-Ugric identity in Finland and Estonia.
Paweł Rutkowski (PhD., Assoc. Prof.) is head of the Section for Sign Linguistics at the University of Warsaw. He specializes in the field of syntax of natural languages, with special focus on Polish Sign Language. He leads the team developing one of the largest sign language corpora in the world. He is the author of numerous journal articles and book chapters published internationally.
Jūratė Čerškutė (PhD) – literary scholar and literary critic. She is a researcher at the Institute of Lithuanian Literature and Folklore and a lecturer at the University of Warsaw, Subdepartment of Baltic Studies. Her interests and research are focused on the work of Lithuanian writer Ričardas Gavelis, on the contemporary Lithuanian prose, narrative and reading. For the last decade she has been actively observing and reflecting on literary life – her commentaries and book reviews have been published in the prominent magazines in Lithuania.