Latvia - A Work in Progress?

Dr. Li Bennich-Björkman is Johan Skytte Professor in Eloquence and Political Science at the University of Uppsala. A member of the Swedish Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences, she held visiting fellowships at the Swedish and Helsinki Collegiums for Advanced Study as well as University of California at Berkeley. Her previous books include, among others, Political Culture under Institutional Pressure (Palgrave Macmillan 2007) and Baltic Biographies at Historical Crossroads (Routledge 2012). Her papers have been published by, among other outlets, East European Politics and Societies, Nationalities Papers, Journal of Baltic Studies, East European Quarterly, East/West: Journal of Ukrainian Studies, Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe, and Higher Education Quarterly. Dr. Sergiy Kurbatov is an Affiliated Researcher with the University of Uppsala, Senior Fellow at the National Academy of Educational Sciences of Ukraine in Kyiv, and Board Member of the Ukrainian Educational Research Association. Previously, he held visiting positions at Colorado State University and Brown University. His previous books include Istorychnyy chas yak determinanta tvorchoho protsesu (Informatsiiny systemy 2009) and Fenomen universytetu v konteksti chasovykh ta prostorovykh vyklykiv (Universytetska knyha 2014). His papers have been published by, among other outlets, Vyshcha osvita Ukrainy, Filosofiya osvity, International Review of Social Research, and Pedagogika Filozoficzna.

Timofey Agarin is a Lecturer in Comparative Politics and Ethnic Conflict in Queen’s University Belfast, where he is also the Director of the Centre for the Study of Ethnic Conflict. His research interest is in ethnic politics and their impact on transition from communism in Central Eastern European states, as well as issue areas of non-discrimination, minority protection, migration, and civil society. Agarin has published in Ethnopolitics, Perspectives on European Politics and Society, Ethnicities, and Nationalities Papers. He authored A Cat’s Lick? Democratisation and Minority Communities in the post-Soviet Baltic (Rodopi 2010) and edited Minority Integration in Central Eastern Europe: Between Ethnic Diversity and Equality (Rodopi 2009, with Malte Brosig) and Institutional Legacies of Communism: Change and Continuities in Minority Protection (Routledge 2013, with Karl Cordell and Alexander Osipov).