Projects

Podcast – Gridiron Baltic

2025–Present

Gridiron Baltic is a monthly podcast exploring the unlikely but compelling story of American football in the Baltic states and within the Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania diasporas across North America. Through interviews with players, coaches, organizers, and researchers, blended with archival discoveries, the podcast delves into the little-known history of how a distinctly American sport connects and develops alongside three distant nations with complex and intertwined histories.

Gridiron Baltic will explore everything from Baltic-born players in North America to Cold War-era legends and the grassroots teams of the present-day. The podcast is part of the Sports History Network. More details coming soon.

Fellowship – Aistijan Eclipse: The Decline of a Nascent Baltic Exile Movement, 1953–1985

2023

Research undertaken within the framework of a Herder Institute Fellowship at the Herder Institute in Marburg, Germany, examining the activities of Jūlijs Bračs (1909–1984) and his attempt the re-establish the activities of interwar Latvian-Lithuanian rapprochement societies in German displaces persons (DP) camps following the Second World War. During the fellowship, an extensive examination of the individuals involved with Bračs’ “Aistijan” movement, utilising the press clippings archive of the Herder Institute to acquire biographical and contextualising information.

Creative Research – Finding Morta: In Search of the Lost Baltic Queen

2022–Present

An investigation into the legends and folklore of the Latgalian origin of Morta Mindaugienė (c. 1210–1263), the first and only Queen of Lithuania. The outcome of the project will be a manuscript entitled Finding Morta: In Search of the Lost Baltic Queen, a creative work with an academic core that focuses upon the life, identity, and fate of Morta. Adopting a multidisciplinary approach, the project draws from different disciplines, including history, archaeology, folkloristics, and literature. The manuscript blends a historiographical study with a travelogue of expeditions in Latgale, and creative non-fiction. Incorporating three popular literary genres – history, travel writing, and fiction – Finding Morta transitions from an academic study into a creative work, focusing on both a historical personality and distinctive region. The manuscript will provide a unique introduction to the story of Morta and the history of Latgale while locating them within larger and more familiar narratives of Baltic history. This project was partially funded by a Baumanis Grant for Creative Research in Baltic Studies, awarded by the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies (AABS) in 2022. The Baumanis Grant was used for fieldwork research, gather stories and evidence.

You can listen to an interview about the project on the Baltic Ways Podcast, produced by AABS, in partnership with the Baltic Initiative at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. And, read the Baumanis Grant Report on the AABS website.

Special Issue – Recognition: de facto and de jure

2021–2022

Acta Historica Tallinnensia, Vol. 28, No. 2, “Recognition: de facto and de jure” (2022). A special issue of Tallinn University’s peer-reviewed history journal, guest co-edited by James Montgomery Baxenfield (Tallinn University), and Kevin Rändi (Tallinn University). The special issue revisited the 1922 diplomatic recognition of the governments of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania by the United States of America on its centenary. Articles included “Conciliation or Disappointment? Baltic German Reactions to Estonian and Latvian Recognition” by Heidi Rifk (Tallinn University); “The United States and Estonia, 1918–1921: Approval de facto before Recognition” by Eero Medijainen (University of Tartu); “The Path to Recognition from the United States, 1919–1922: The Case of Latvia” by Ēriks Jēkabsons (University of Latvia); “The International Recognitions of Lithuania and Their Value (1918–1924)” by Sandra Grigaravičiūtė (Genocide and Resistance Research Centre of Lithuania); and, an “Afterword: Self-Determination and Recognition in the Baltic States, 1917–1922” by Eva Piirimäe (University of Tartu). The introductory article, “Precarious Roads to Recognition: Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, 1917–1922”, co-authored with Rändi, was awarded second place in the category of Society and Open Governance in the Annual Tallinn University Competition for Published Research.

PhD Dissertation – Footnotes to the Past: The Unrealised Idea of a Latvian-Lithuanian State

2019–Present

Doctoral dissertation. “Footnotes to the Past: The Unrealised Idea of a Latvian-Lithuanian State” examines notions of establishing a common Latvian-Lithuanian state in various historical period during the nineteenth and twentieth century. The research charts how notions of kinship between the emergent Latvian and Lithuanian nations underwent transformations in different socio-political contexts, emerging as a Lithuanian-American idea with significant support across political and religious divides before later transitioning into a nascent Latvian exile movement following the Second World War. The dissertation successfully passed preliminary defence at Tallinn University on Friday. 12th December 2025. More details coming soon.