Dr Vaida Niksaite

I am a historian of modern Europe, specialising in the Baltic countries and Poland, transatlantic migration, mass politics and culture, with particular interest in the periods of regime change. Currently a Wiener-Anspach postdoctoral fellow, I hold a PhD from the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB), where I completed my dissertation, "Dreaming and selling a nation: Lithuanian propaganda and crowdfunding, 1900–1923", under the supervision of Pieter Lagrou and Petra James. I received an MA in History, summa cum laude, from ULB, as well as an MA in Translation and a BA in History from Vilnius University.

My doctoral research examined Lithuanian nation-building through public relations and crowdfunding campaigns led by the American diaspora in the early twentieth century. I am currently exploring the parallel case of Polish nation-state building and “selling”. My next project focuses on transatlantic return migration from the Americas to Lithuania throughout the twentieth century.

As a member of Repine, an international and interdisciplinary network for the study of influence practices, I co-organise its monthly seminar at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences in Paris (EHESS).

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