Eva Eglāja-Kristsone participates in a seminar on the “Long Perestroika”

From 1 to 3 June 2026, the international seminar The Long Perestroika from Afar: Making Peripheries Central is taking place at Kloster Seeon, Germany. The event brings together researchers from Europe and the United States to examine perestroika processes beyond the traditional political centres.

The seminar focuses on the concept of the “long perestroika” (approximately the 1980s–2000), paying particular attention to regional experiences, local initiatives, and marginalized social groups. In doing so, it broadens existing perspectives on the transformations of this period.

Latvia is represented by Eva Eglāja-Kristsone, Director and Senior Researcher at the Institute of Literature, Folklore and Art of the University of Latvia. She participates in the panel Out of Centre: Media-Making in and about Peripheries. Her paper, From “Cīņa” to “Neatkarīgā Cīņa”: Media Transformation, Marketization, and the Long Perestroika in Latvia, co-authored with Jānis Oga, examines the transformation of these newspapers during Latvia’s transition period, highlighting the role of the media in the context of changing political culture and economic reforms.

The seminar is the third and final event in an international conference series dedicated to the “long perestroika”, following earlier meetings in Prague and Washington, D.C. It is organized within the framework of a project funded by the European Research Council (ERC), which aims to reassess the significance of perestroika for understanding contemporary political and social processes.

The conference programme is available HERE.

Participation in the seminar is one of the activities carried out within the project Latvian Literature as Belonging: Personalities, Poetics, and the Public Sphere (LITBEL) (No. VPP-IZM-Letonika-2025/1-0006).

^{Image: Kloster Seeon. © Creative Commons.}