Team

Catherine Gibson – Principal Investigator 

Catherine is Associate Professor of East European Studies at the Johan Skytte Institute of Political Studies of the University of Tartu. Her research to date has focused on the history of nationalism, language, and science in Eastern Europe, with a particular focus on the Baltic provinces of the Romanov Empire in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. She is author of the book Geographies of Nationhood: Cartography, Science, and Society in the Russian Imperial Baltic (Oxford University Press, 2022), which won the 2023 University of Cambridge Baltic Geopolitics Network Publication Prize. At the Skytte Institute, she is the academic head of the Centre for Eurasian and Russian Studies (CEURUS), leads the programme committee of the annual Tartu Conference on East European and Eurasian Studies, and teaches on the Erasmus Mundus Joint Masters in Central, East European, Russian and Eurasian Studies (CEERES). Estonian Research Information System (ETIS) profile.

Jelizaveta Potapenkova – Project Communication Specialist  

Jelizaveta is a Master´s student at the Johan Skytte Institute of Political Studies of the University of Tartu and is also the project communication specialist for the EMPSOLID ERC project. She manages the social media and advertisement for Centre for Eurasian and Russian Studies (CEURUS), particularly for the annual Tartu Conference on East European and Eurasian Studies, and leads the communication planning for The Empire of Solidarities research project.  

Roberta Erkmaa – Project Manager

Roberta is a project manager at the Johan Skytte Institute of Political Studies of the University of Tartu. She manages various international educational and science projects (with Horizon Europe, Jean Monnet, and Estonian national funding sources) mainly focusing on Ukraine and Moldova.