The Estonian Institute of Historical Memory has announced the winners of its 2025 international research competition for young scholars. The award for Best Research Paper was presented to Juha Rekola for his master’s thesis “Political Refugee: A Legal-Historical Study of the Attribution of Legal Status to Refugees in Finland” (“Poliittinen pakolainen; Oikeushistoriallinen tutkielma pakolaisuuden oikeudellistumisesta Suomessa”), defended at the Faculty of Law of the University of Helsinki.

Rekola’s thesis examines the legal status of political refugees in Finland from the 1930s to the early 21st century, exploring related constitutional, legal, and political debates in the Finnish Parliament, government, law enforcement bodies, and public discourse. Particular attention is given to the evolving status of individuals who fled from the Estonian SSR to Finland, situating this within broader developments in Finnish refugee policy. In March 2025, the Finnish Lawyers’ Association also recognised Rekola’s work with its award for an outstanding master’s thesis in law.

The award for Best Article went to Dr. Matic Batič, a researcher at Slovenia’s Study Centre for National Reconciliation (SCNR), for his article “Between Communism and Nationalism: Slovene Communist Spatial Politics in the North Adriatic Region, 1943–54”, published in the Journal of Contemporary History (vol. 59, no. 4, October 2024).

His study examines the Yugoslav partisans’ activities in the North Adriatic region following the fall of Benito Mussolini in 1943, a period during which the partisans partially controlled the territory while continuing to fight German occupation forces until the end of the Second World War. From 1947 to 1954, part of the region formed the Free Territory of Trieste under a UN Security Council mandate before being divided between Italy and Yugoslavia.

Batič’s article details the Slovene communists’ deliberate efforts to “Slovenize” the region—through the construction of monuments commemorating fallen partisans, the removal of Italian monuments, the organisation of communist graffiti campaigns, the desecration of churches, and the alteration of place names, among other measures.

The full text of the article is available at: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00220094241271045.

The committee also awarded honourable mentions to two additional works:

Ginta Ieva Bikše (University of Latvia) for her doctoral dissertation “The International Dimension of the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) and Latvia” and Emilija Brand (Lund University Faculty of Law) for her master’s thesis “An Analysis of the Evidentiary Practice of the European Court of Human Rights in Judgements against Latvia Concerning the History of Latvia (1940–1990)”.

This year’s submissions were evaluated by a committee consisting of Toomas Hiio, Meelis Maripuu, Peeter Kaasik, and Elmar Gams.

Previous laureates of the competition include:

  • Stefan Gužvica, Learning Leninism: Factional Struggles in the Communist Party of Yugoslavia during the Great Purge (1936–1940) (Central European University);
  • Daniel Rugerio Bonenkamp, Die Aktion Verwüstung und der Einfluss des Ministeriums für Staatssicherheit auf die deutsch-deutschen Beziehungen (University of Münster, Germany);
  • Henry Hemple Prown, Famine, Trial, War: The Daily Worker During the Great Depression (The College of William & Mary, Virginia, USA);
  • Ekaterina Pavlenko, Range of Soviet Citizens’ Responses to WTO Intervention in Czechoslovakia and its Meaning for CPSU Policy-Making (Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences);
  • Cătălina Andricioaei, ‘Some citizens:’ Romani Romanians and Socialist Citizenship in Romania, 1947–1989 (European University Institute, Florence, Italy).

The Estonian Institute of Historical Memory’s international research competition for young scholars has been held annually since 2018. Eligible submissions include master’s and doctoral theses completed in the same or previous calendar year, as well as peer-reviewed research articles published in one of the fields specified in the competition’s statutes.

The prize for the winning doctoral thesis is €3000, for the winning master’s thesis €1500, and for the best research article €1500. With the author’s consent, awarded works may be published in one of the Institute’s publications.
Competition statutes: https://mnemosyne.ee/en/competition/ .