UL ILFA Chosen as Internship Placement by Master’s Student from Italy

We are pleased to welcome Ilaria Da Rin Bettina, a Master’s student from the University of Bologna (Italy), who will be undertaking an internship at the Institute of Literature, Folklore and Art (UL ILFA) this autumn.

Ilaria has studied languages (English, German, Russian) and holds a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Padua. In 2017, while still in secondary school, she participated in an exchange programme and spent ten months in Ādaži, becoming part of a wonderful Latvian family who opened the door for her to Latvian culture. Since then, Ilaria has always dreamed of returning to Latvia. From May to mid-August this year, she interned at the Embassy of Italy in Riga and will now join the UL ILFA team for two months.

In her master’s thesis, Ilaria will focus on the political aspects of the Singing Revolution, exploring how folklore was used in Latvia during the Third Awakening to restore cultural identity and how, after this cultural revival, it transitioned into the political sphere. Her aim is to study informal groups — how they interacted and collaborated with political movements or became agents of political change themselves. Ilaria is also interested in how these groups used music, especially folk and rock music, as a form of political resistance and a means of mobilization on the path toward freedom and independence.

At UL ILFA, Ilaria will take part in the research project “The Folklore Movement in Latvia: Resources, Ideologies, and Practices” (No. lzp-2021/1-0243).