Violeta DAVOLIŪTĖ

Doctor of Humanities and Senior Research Fellow
El. mail: Violeta.Davoliute@LKTI.LT

Research Interests

20th-century historical traumas and cultural memory in Lithuania and the Baltic region, Holocaust memory and commemoration in Lithuania and Europe, cultural policy, nationalism, post-colonialism.

Education and Professional Development

Participant, Jacob and Yetta Gelman International Research Seminar, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, USA, 2025.

Research Fellow, Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies, Austria, 2022–2023.

Research Fellow, Richard Pipes Laboratory, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland, 2022.

Research Fellow, Imre Kertész Kolleg Jena, Germany, 2018–2019.

Visiting Scholar/Lecturer, École des hautes études en sciences sociales, France, 2016.

Affiliate Visiting Scholar, The MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies, Yale University, USA, 2015–2016.

Visiting Research Fellow, Uppsala Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Sweden, 2015.

Research Fellow, Virtual Summer Research Laboratory (VSRL, Russian, East European, and Eurasian Center), University of Illinois, USA, 2021.

PhD defended at University of Toronto (Canada), dissertation: Testimony: from the Poetics of Place to the Politics of Memory (2004).

Major Publications

Monographs and Edited Books

Davoliūtė, V., B. Tornquist-Plewa, and D. Budrytė. Turning Points of Public History. DeGruyter, 2026 (in press).

Budrytė, D., V. Davoliūtė, eds. The Routledge Handbook of Memory in Eastern Europe. Routledge, 2026 (in press).

Woodworth, B., Davoliūtė, V., and D. Staliūnas, eds. Ethnic Relations in the Baltic Reconsidered. CEU Press, 2026.

Davoliūtė, V., N. Mileris, L. Brašiškis, and A. Narušytė, eds. Everyday Representations of War in Late Modernity. Palgrave Macmillan, 2022.

Davoliūtė, V., and T. Balkelis. Narratives of Identity and Displacement in Soviet Deportation Memoirs from the Baltic States. Budapest: CEU Press, 2018.

Balkelis, T., and V. Davoliūtė. Populations Displacement in 20th Century Lithuania: Experiences, Identities, Legacies. Amsterdam: Brill, 2015.

Davoliūtė, V. The Making and Breaking of Soviet Lithuania: Memory and Modernity in the Wake of War. London: Routledge, 2014.

Davoliūtė, V. Maps of Memory: Trauma, Identity and Exile in Deportation Memoirs from the Baltic States. Vilnius: LLTI, 2012.

Articles and Book Chapters

Davoliūtė, V. "The Ethnographic Moment of Lithuanian Poetic Documentary." In Johanna Lindbladh and Anja Tippner, eds., The Art of Witnessing. CEU Press, 2025 (in press).

Davoliūtė, V., D. Staliūnas, B. Woodworth. "Introduction." In Ethnic Relations in the Baltic Reconsidered. Budapest: CEU Press, 2026.

Davoliūtė, V. "The Habitus of Holocaust Remembrance during the Thaw in Soviet Lithuania." In Ethnic Relations in the Baltic Reconsidered. CEU Press, 2026.

Davoliūtė, V., N. Latvytė, I. Rasickaitė, and R. Vyšniauskaitė. "From Monologue to Dialogue? Museums, Memory, and Identity in the Vilnius Region." Lituanus (2026).

Davoliūtė, V. "Gendered Returns from Concentration Camps in Soviet-occupied Europe. The Life Stories of Hannah Rigler and Primo Levi." In Nina Paulovicova, Anna Cichopek-Gajraj and Joanna Beata Michlic, eds., Shattered Liberation: Sexualized Violence against Holocaust Survivors. Purdue University Press, 2025.

Budrytė, D., and V. Davoliūtė. "Continuity or Change? The Russo-Ukrainian War and Decolonization of Memory in Lithuania." Global Studies Quarterly 5.4 (2025).

Davoliūtė, V., and S. Stasiulis. "Neighbors look to Neighbors. Debates over the Holocaust in Lithuania." Zagłada Żydów. Studia i Materiały (2025): 56–69.

Davoliūtė, V. "The Securitization of Memory and the Practice of Public History in the Baltic States." In Defending Memory in Global Politics. Routledge, 2025: 52–70.

Davoliūtė, V. "The Topography of Transgression: Non-Jewish Testimony to Plunder during the Holocaust in the Lithuanian Provinces." S:I.M.O.N. 12.2 (2025).

Davoliūtė, V., B. Törnquist-Plewa, and M. Vrzgulová. "Slow Memory. Perspectives from Central and Eastern Europe. Introduction." Slovenský národopis 72.4 (2024): 426–432. DOI: https://doi.org/10.31577/SN.2024.4.33

Davoliūtė, V. "Decolonisation in Lithuania? Revisiting the Concept of Cultural Resistance under Foreign Rule since 1990." kunsttexte.de 1 (2024): 1–11.

Davoliūtė, V. "Perpetrator Postmemory and the Holocaust in Purple Mist (2019) and Izaokas (2019)." Slavic and East European Journal 67.3 (2023): 363–379.

Davoliūtė, V. “The Gaze of the Implicated Subject: Non-Jewish Testimony to Communal Violence during the German Occupation of Lithuania.” East European Politics and Societies 37.2 (2023): 493–511.

Davoliūtė, V. “Agonistic homecomings: Holocaust postmemory, perspective and locality.” Memory Studies 15.3 (2022): 539–550.

Davoliūtė, V., and O. Rudling. “The Rustic Turn in Soviet Lithuania.” Canadian Slavonic Papers 65.1 (2023): 30–51.

Davoliūtė, V. “The Baltic Model of Civic-Patriotic History.” Journal of Genocide Research 24.2 (2022): 264–275.

Davoliūtė, V. “Genealogical Writing and Memory of the Holocaust in Lithuania.” East European Jewish Affairs 51.3 (2021).

Davoliūtė, V. "Silence Bound Our Family Together: Agonistic Postmemory in the Family Biographical Narratives of Daniel Mendelsohn, Ruta Gabis and Julija Šukys." In Margarita Matulytė, ed., Migration: Concepts and Experiences. Vilnius: Lithuanian National Museum of Art, 2022.

Davoliūtė, V. "Local Testimony and the (Un)Silencing of Sexual Violence in Lithuania under German Occupation during WWII." Humanities 10 (2021): 129.

Davoliūtė, V. "The Aesthetics of Justice: Recognition and the Holocaust in Soviet Films of the Thaw." Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema 15.2 (2021): 104–121.

Davoliūtė, V. "State of the Art in Studies of Late Socialism in the Baltic States." Sovijus 8.1 (2020): 56–69.

Davoliūtė, V. "Cold War Cinema and the Traumatic Turn in Europe. Faktas as the Soviet Mirror of the Holocaust Film." Studies in Soviet and Russian Cinema 14.1 (2020): 57–71.

Davoliūtė, V. "Lithuania. Fractured and Contested Memory Regimes." In Ninna Mörner, ed., CBEES State of the Region Report 2020: Constructions and Instrumentalization of the Past. A Comparative Study on Memory Management in the Region. Stockholm: Elanders, 2020: 80–87.

Balkelis, T., and V. Davoliūtė. "Legislated History in Post-Communist Lithuania." In Nico Wouters and Berber Bevernage, eds., Handbook on State Sponsored History after 1945. Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.

Davoliūtė, V., and L. Kaminskaitė-Jančorienė. "Sovietization and Cinema: Gender, Identity, Ideology in the Film 'Marytė'." Politologija (2018).

Davoliūtė, V. "The Memory of Soviet Crimes and the Politics of the Past in Contemporary Lithuania." Osteuropa (2018).

Davoliūtė, V. "Between the Public and the Personal: A New Stage of Holocaust Memory in Lithuania." Cultures of History Forum, Imre Kertész Kolleg Jena, December 19, 2018.

Davoliūtė, V. "Pluralisierung unter Schmerzen. Litauens Umgang mit der Vergangenheit." Osteuropa 6 (2018): 91–100.

Davoliūtė, V. "L'imbrication des expériences historiques. La mémoire de la déportation des Juifs lituaniens par les Soviétiques." Ethnologie française 2 (2018): 209–224.

Davoliūtė, V. "Heroes, Villains and Matters of State: The Partisan and Popular Memory in Lithuania Today." Cultures of History Forum, Imre Kertész Kolleg Jena, November 17, 2017.

Budrytė, D., and V. Davoliūtė. "Entangled History, History Education, and Affective Communities in Lithuania." In Cynthia M. Horne and Lavinia Stan, eds., Transitional Justice and the Former Soviet Union: Reviewing the Past and Looking Toward the Future. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017: 323–344.

Davoliūtė, V., and L. Kaminskaitė-Jančorienė. "Sovietization and the Cinema in the Western Borderlands: Insurgency, Narrative, and Emancipation in Marytė (1947)." Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 3 (2016).

Davoliūtė, V. "Representations of Historical Trauma in the Cinema of Late Twentieth Century France and Lithuania." In Tatjana Kuharenoka, Irina Novikova and Ivars Orehovs, eds., Memory. Identity. Culture. Riga: LU Akadēmiskais Apgāds, 2015: 175–190.

Davoliūtė, V. "The Sovietization of Lithuania after WWII: Modernization, Transculturation and the Lettered City." Journal of Baltic Studies, special issue Post-Colonialism in the Baltic States (2015).

Davoliūtė, V. "A Forgotten History of Soviet Deportation: The Case of Lithuanian Jews." In Tomas Balkelis and Violeta Davoliūtė, eds., Population Displacement in Lithuania in the 20th Century: Experiences, Identities and Legacies. Amsterdam: Brill, 2015: 167–193.

Davoliūtė, V. "Postwar Reconstruction and the Imperial Sublime in Vilnius During Late Stalinism." Ab Imperio 2014.1 (2014): 176–203.

Davoliūtė, V. "We Are All Deportees: The Trauma of Displacement and the Consolidation of National Identity during the Popular Movement in Lithuania." In Maps of Memory: Trauma, Identity and Exile in Deportation Memoirs from the Baltic States. Vilnius: LLTI, 2012: 107–136.

Davoliūtė, V. "The Prague Declaration of 2008 and its Repercussions in Lithuania: Historical Justice and Reconciliation." Lituanus 57.3 (Fall 2011): 49–62.

Davoliūtė, V. "Vilnius: City of Strangers." Journal of Baltic Studies 40.1 (2009): 340–342.

Davoliūtė, V. "Lithuania and the New West-East Migration." OIKOS: Lithuanian Migration & Diaspora Studies 6.2 (2008): 73–80.

Davoliūtė, V. "Challenges of Trauma: Migration, Integration and the Role of Cultural Competence." OIKOS: Lithuanian Migration & Diaspora Studies 5.1 (2008): 41–48.

Davoliūtė, V. "The Popular Movement and Postmodernism: Reflections on the Cinema of Sąjūdis." Athena: Philosophical Studies 3 (2007): 124–134.

Davoliūtė, V. "Testimony of Child Survivors of the Gulag." In J. Knörr, ed., Children and Migration: From Experience to Agency. Bielefeld & Sommerset, N.J.: Transcript & Transaction Press, 2005.

Davoliūtė, V. "Deportee Testimonies and Lithuanian History." Journal of Baltic Studies 36.1 (Spring 2005): 51–68.

Davoliūtė, V. "Varlam Shalamov and the Art of Memory." Canadian Slavonic Papers 46.4 (Spring & Summer 2004): 1–23.

Davoliūtė, V. "Maps of Traumatic Memory: Representations of Holocaust Memory Journeys to East Central Europe." Baltos lankos 14 (2002): 35–49.

Davoliūtė, V. "The City in Two Novels: Jurgis Kunčinas' Tūla and Ričardas Gavelis' Vilnius Poker." In Artūras Tereškinas, ed., Intimate Spaces, Public Lives: Body, Publicity, Fantasy in Contemporary Lithuania. Vilnius: Baltos Lankos, 2002: 85–98.

Translations of Scholarly Books

Davoliūtė, V., trans. Edward W. Said. Orientalism. Vilnius: Apostrofa, 2005.

Expert Activities and Participation in Scholarly Organizations

Principal Investigator, "Facing the Past: Public History for a Stronger Europe" (EUROPAST), Horizon Europe Widening Programme, European Commission, Grant No. 101079466, 2022–2025.

Co-Editor, CEU Press book series Memory, Heritage and Public History in Central and Eastern Europe.

Member of Academic Advisory Board, ERC project "The 'Soviet West' Revisited: Individual and Collective Agency in the Contact Zones of Everyday Life in the Estonian SSR" (PRG2140, PI: Prof. Karsten Brüggemann, Tallinn University), 2024–2028.

Lithuanian Management Committee Representative, COST Action "Slow Memory: Transformative Practices for Times of Uneven and Accelerating Change" (CA20105, PI: Prof. Jenny Wustenberg, Nottingham Trent university), 2019–2025.

Research Consultant, Lost Shtetl Museum, Šeduva, 2019, 2023, 2025.

Member of Academic Advisory Board, ERC project "Translating Memories: The Eastern European Past in the Global Arena" (853385, PI: Prof. Eneken Laanes, Tallinn University, Estonia).

Expert, European Commission CERV Programme (European Remembrance), 2021.

Expert, Latvian Research Council, 2021.

Expert, Academy of Finland, 2021, 2025.

Expert, Estonian Research Council, 2020, 2023.

Expert, Research Council of Lithuania, 2019.

Expert, EC EACEA (Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency), 2016–2017.

Expert, Lithuanian Culture Council, 2013–2016.

Peer Review

Routledge Histories of Central and Eastern Europe (UK)

American Historical Review (USA)

Slavic Review (UK)

Academic Publishers (LT, USA)

Acta historica universitatis Klaipedensis

Journal of Baltic Studies (AABS), USA

Journal of Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society (Germany)

Lithuanian Historical Studies (LT, USA)

Politologija (LT, Vilnius University IIRPS)

Politics, Religion and Ideology (UK)