About me

Born and raised in Vilnius, I currently live in Atlanta. I am Professor of Political Science at Georgia Gwinnett College, and I work on EUROPAST project at the Institute of International Relations and Political Science, Vilnius University.  My research interests include memory politics, trauma, nationalism and gender studies. My publications include articles on various topics related to minority rights and memory politics, one single authored and five co-edited books, including Memory and Trauma in International Relations: Theories, Cases and Debates (co-editor with Erica Resende), and Defending Memory in Global Politics: Mnemonical In/Security and Crisis (co-editor with Erica Resende and Doug Becker, forthcoming in 2024).  In 2015, I was the recipient of the University System of Georgia Excellence in Teaching Award.  In 2022-24, I served as the President of AABS (Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies).

This volume analyzes crises in International Relations (IR) in an innovative way. Rather than conceptualizing a crisis as something unexpected that has to be managed, the contributors argue that a crisis needs to be analyzed within a wider context of change: when new discourses are formed, communities are (re)built, and new identities emerge. Focusing on Ukraine, the book explores various questions related to crisis and change, including: How are crises culturally and socially constructed? How do issues of agency and structure come into play in Ukraine? Which subjectivities were brought into existence by Ukraine crisis discourses? Chapters explore the participation of women in Euromaidan, identity shifts in the Crimean Tatar community and diaspora politics, discourses related to corruption, anti-Soviet partisan warfare, and the annexation of Crimea, as well as long distance impacts of the crisis.

Engaging Difference discusses how to develop strategies to engage difference that work for both students and professors in multicultural classrooms. The contributions to this volume discuss specific pedagogical techniques (for example, the use of novels, web resources, and personal narratives) and the ways in which these have been applied in the classroom and in related educational activities. One contribution addresses the issues related to the freedom of speech in diverse classrooms. The essays are rooted in relevant theoretical perspectives from active learning literature, including emerging approaches on intersectional pedagogies. All authors are practitioners engaged in teaching in college, and several have previous high school teaching experience. They openly discuss challenges related to teaching in diverse classrooms and suggest pedagogical strategies to thrive in diverse environments. 

Engaging Difference discusses how to develop strategies to engage difference that work for both students and professors in multicultural classrooms. The contributions to this volume discuss specific pedagogical techniques (for example, the use of novels, web resources, and personal narratives) and the ways in which these have been applied in the classroom and in related educational activities. One contribution addresses the issues related to the freedom of speech in diverse classrooms. The essays are rooted in relevant theoretical perspectives from active learning literature, including emerging approaches on intersectional pedagogies. All authors are practitioners engaged in teaching in college, and several have previous high school teaching experience. They openly discuss challenges related to teaching in diverse classrooms and suggest pedagogical strategies to thrive in diverse environments. 

This work seeks to provide a comprehensive and accessible survey of the international dimension of trauma and memory and its manifestations in various cultural contexts. Drawing together contributions and case studies from scholars around the globe, the book explores the international political dimension of feeling, suffering, forgetting, remembering and memorializing traumatic events and to investigate how they function as social practices for overcoming trauma and creating social change. Divided into two sections, the book maps out the different theoretical debates and then moves on to examine emerging themes such as ontological security, social change, gender, religion, foreign policy & natural disasters. Throughout the chapters, the editors consider the social, political and ethical implications of forgetting and remembering traumatic events in world politics. Showcasing how trauma and memory deepen our understanding of IR, this work will be of great interest to students and scholars of international relations, memory and trauma studies and security studies.

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