News

On 14th November 10 am an international scientific conference 'Root Cause: Comparative Studies in Literature and Translation' will take place in Vilnius, Lithuania, as part of the '2024: the Year of Estonian Literature in Lithuania' programme. The confirmed keynote speakers are dr. Aija Sakova (Ene Mihkelson Society, Tallinn University) and dr. Elle-Mari Talivee (Under and Tuglas Literature Centre of the Estonian Academy of Sciences, Tallinn University). Conference participants are the following Estonian, Lithuanian and Czech literary scholars, grad and PhD students and translators: Eva Velsker, Mart Velsker, Ene-Reet Soovik, Jan-Marek Šík, Daina Valentinavičienė, Johanna Roos, Kateřina Běláková, Markas Aurelijus Piesinas. 

Conference venue: Vilnius UNESCO City of Literature (šv. Jono g. 11–16).

Registration: 9:45 am.

Conference starts at 10 am.

You may find the full programme, keynotes and abstracts attached below. 

More information:

If you have any questions regarding the conference, please contact us at .

Welcome to the conference and see you soon!

From 28 to 29 October, we invite all eligible academic staff members to cast their votes for candidates running for the Council of Vilnius University (VU) at the designated polling stations. Early voting takes place on 21–22 October. To check your eligibility, simply enter your full name on the dedicated election subpage (the entry field is at the bottom of the text, under the prompt to check your eligibility “Patikrinkite, ar turite teisę rinkti Tarybą. Sužinokite, kur ir kada”). We also kindly encourage you to participate in the candidate debates, where you can learn more about their ideas and proposals to help you make an informed voting decision.

The election of the VU Council is organised in accordance with the Description of the Procedure for the Election and Termination of the Powers of the Members of the Council of Vilnius University approved by the Senate of Vilnius University and Resolution of the Senate of Vilnius University No. SPN-34 of 21 May 2024 “On the Initiation of the Election of the Council of Vilnius University”. For the most up-to-date information on the candidates, see the VU Council Elections 2024 subpage; the latest information on the debates can be found on the Debates subpage (available in Lithuanian).

Voting will take place at designated locations within the following VU units. Please refer to the list below to find out where you can cast your vote in the election of the VU Council.

The Council ensures the autonomy of the University and self-governance of the VU community corresponding to the University’s long-term goals and experimental, social, cultural, and technological development, as well as the responsibility to the nation and the State of Lithuania, openness, and accountability to society. Together with the Senate and the Rector, it is responsible for the quality of the University activities. In accordance with its competence established in the Statute, the Council monitors compliance of the University activities and governance with the VU mission, objectives, tasks and principles of activity, general academic interests, and the requirements for openness and accountability to society established in the Statute.

The Council consists of 11 members and serves a five-year term: five members are from the University’s academic staff, four – external (non-University community) members, and two – VU students’ representatives.

The Centre for Scandinavian Studies is happy to invite you to meet Bengt Jangfeldt, a prominent Swedish slavicist, translator and writer.

BJ has written books about B. Pasternak, V. Mayakovsky, O. Mandelštam, R. Jakobson, D. Harms, Josif Brodsky, and published anthologies of Russian poetry. In 1982 his published in Russian correspondence between Mayakovsky and Lili Brik (also published in Swedish in 1984) became a classic book (published in other languages as well). In 2007 he published a book on Mayakovsky and his environment, later translated into Russian, French and other languages (the English edition is considered to be "the first comprehensive biography of Mayakovsky"), it was awarded the highest Swedish literary prize Augustpriset (August [Strindberg]) prize). In 2017 BJ published a book "Vi och dem. Bengt Jangfeldt om Ryssland som idé' [Us and Them. Bengt Jangfeldt on Russia as an Idea]. In 2022 after the war started, it was published a second time and translated into many languages. Bengt Jangfeldt is also the author of books on Axel Munthe (for which he received the prize of the Swedish Academy), Raoul Wallenberg, the Nobel family, has written many articles (both journalistic and scientific (BJ worked for many years at Stockholm University)), see more here Välkommen - Bengt Jangfeldt. BJ has been awarded many literary prizes, and in 2021 he was awarded the King of Sweden's gold medal for his outstanding work as a writer and translator.

You are welcome to meet Bengt Jangfeldt on Tuesday, October 22:

11.30, 314 AB aud. in Swedish about Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat who saved thousands of Hungarian Jewish lives and later died in the Russian Gulag. (BJ will speak about RW in English at other events in Vilnius and Kaunas).

13.00, 314 AB aud. in Russian about Josif Brodsky - memories, poetics, translation problems.

We thank Swedish Embassy for this opportunity.

We hope to see you at the lectures!

Join the Arqus Alumni Mentorship Programme for the 2024-2025 academic year! Whether you’re an alumni, a young professional eager to share your knowledge or a student looking to get some advice in shaping your university or professional career, this programme offers an enriching experience for all participants.

The Arqus Alumni Mentorship Programme is an online initiative that connects Arqus alumni, regardless of their field of study or current profession, with current students and recent graduates to provide mentorship, career guidance and networking opportunities.

The programme support students in work-integrated learning and their transition to the professional world, especially in transnational contexts.

Like in the first edition, the Arqus Alumni Mentorship Programme is a unique opportunity for Arqus alumni to support the next generation of professionals. The program continues to promote Arqus core values of academic excellence, mobility and societal engagement. Mentees will receive personalized guidance, advice and support, helping them develop skills and make informed decisions about their careers within the Alliance.

For more information see here and here

Copyright Andrew Andersen, 2003

The Centre for Scandinavian Studies is happy to host The Karelian Seminar that will take place on Wednesday, the 23th of October, 3:00-4:45 PM, Room 314 and will feature two presentations by distinguished speakers. Further you will find annotations of both lectures.

Dr. Ilya Solomeshch is a specialist in the history and historiography of Karelia and Russia and the history of Russian-Nordic relations. Before relocating to Vilnius in 2023, he worked at Petrozavodsk University, where he was responsible for the Nordic History Study Program and was one of the editors of the Nordic and Baltic Studies Review. In Vilnius, he has been a Grant Fellow at the European Humanities University and a lecturer at the NGO ''Švietimo iniciatyva Vilnis''.

Title: A Promised Land between East and West? Ambivalent images of Karelia in national master narratives, identity building, and history politics

Abstract: In the Finnish and Russian historiographical tradition and public space, approaches to the description of the history of Karelia do not coincide – and not only in assessments, but also in the fundamental methodological framing – ethnocentric vs. state-centric. As a result, Karelia appears as a space with blurred geographical boundaries and an uncertain correlation between its subjectivity and objectivity. The lecture aims to systematise and interpret the various connotations of Karelia in Finnish and Russian tradition – Karelia as a battlefield, a bridge, a corridor, a promised land, a space of peace and neighbourliness, and an outpost.

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Dr. Satu Grünthal is a literary scholar and specialist in education studies. She works as an associate professor and supervisor for doctoral programs: School, Education, Society, and Culture and Philosophy, Arts, and Society at Helsinki University. In 2022-2024, she was visiting Assoc. Professor at Vilnius University and now she continues her cooperation with VU as supervisor of doctoral and MA students, and teacher of Finnish literature.

Title: Vyborg: representations and remembrances in literature and art

Abstract: Vyborg, founded in the 13th century, grew during centuries under Swedish, Russian and Finnish rule into a flourishing multicultural and multilingual community and became the capital of its region, the Karelian Isthmus. Before WWII, Vyborg was the second largest city in the independent state of Finland. During WWII, it was invaded trough Soviet troops and became part of the Soviet Union after the Paris Peace Treaty of 1947. In my talk I shall discuss how Vyborg – despite of decades past – has not lost its significance in the mental space and cultural memory of Finnish people. My focus lies on the ways Vyborg has been remembered, re-written and re-conceptualized in literature, as well in personal memoirs as in fiction and poetry. Vyborg literature is regarded and analyzed as a communally shared place of memory that makes a return to a lost time, space and city possible.

You are kindly invited to attend lectures delivered by Dr Charles Forceville, Professor of the University of Amsterdam and a well-established scholar in visual and multimodal metaphor. The lectures are scheduled for 9.00 o’clock October 21, 2024 (Monday) V. Krėvės Room and 13.00 o’clock October 22, 2024 (Tuesday) in Z. Zinkevičius Room (92).

The language of the lectures is English. Professor Forceville is coming in the framework of the Erasmus Teaching Exchange Programme.

Further you will find annotations of both lectures.

Monday 21 October 2024, 9 am

Title: Metaphors in commercials and films

Abstract: The essence of metaphor is understanding one kind of thing in terms of another kind of thing, as Lakoff and Johnson argued in Metaphors We Live By (1980). The pioneering insight of this monograph was that metaphors are primarily a matter of thinking, and only derivatively a matter of language – and indeed that metaphors play a structural role in cognition. Taking this seriously means that metaphor can also occur for instance in pictures, and in the medium of film – both in emphatically creative varieties and to structure narratives in ways whose metaphoricity is deeply entrenched and thus often hardly noticed – for instance in LIFE IS A JOURNEY. But Marshall McLuhan stated already in the 1960s that “the medium is the message”: information changes when it is presented in another medium. This, then, also holds for metaphorical information. The medium film, for instance, not only conveys metaphorical meaning via visuals, but also via spoken and written language, music, and sound – and often does so by combining these modes. In this talk, examples of both creative and deeply entrenched metaphors in the genres of commercials and films will be shown and discussed.

Tuesday 22 October, 1 pm

Title: Visual and multimodal metaphors as instruments to persuade

Abstract: Aristotle already pointed out that metaphors are powerful tools in persuasive discourse. This insight is still pertinent. The interpretation of metaphors – irrespective of medium, mode, or genre – boils down to finding one or more features and/or emotions in the source domain that are “mapped onto” the target domain. The mappable features of the source domain are always a selection of features in that domain. For instance, in Pat Benatar’s “love is a battlefield” the source domain features “involving ruthlessness and cruelty,” “winning versus losing” and the emotions these characteristics evoke qualify for mapping onto the “love” domain, while “leading to death and physical injury” are presumably not pertinent.

Nowadays, metaphors in persuasive discourse often assume visual or multimodal forms, for instance in advertising and political cartoons. In this paper, metaphors in both genres will be analysed. The focus will be on the question what role the visuals play in triggering the mappings in (1) appealing to pathos (usually: positive emotions for an advertised product and negative emotions for the depiction of a politician or a political state of affairs in political cartoons); and (2) function argumentatively by providing proofs, or appearing to provide proofs (logos) for the central claim the discourse (advertisement or political cartoon) makes.

We hope to see you at the lectures!

We invite students from the centers of the Baltic studies to participate in the second International School of Baltistics at the Faculty of Philology of Vilnius University. It will be held from 28 to 30 November 2024.

The students will have the opportunity to listen to lectures by Balticists on different topics. They will also take part in seminars and network with students from other centers.

• Fluency in Lithuanian at A2/B1 level is required.
• Participation is free of charge, and we will also provide travel, accommodation and lunch.
• The number of participants is very limited.

Registration is open until 20 October at: https://forms.gle/w8CEv4UWapVFXVYk9

If you have any questions, please contact

It is organised by Department of Baltic studies at Vilnius University, financed by the Ministry of Education, Science and Sport. More informatikon on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/events/1705150723358372

We are happy to invite you to ICAME46  (International Computer Archive of Modern and Medieval English) conference, which will take place at Vilnius University (Vilnius, Lithuania) on 17‐21 June 2025.

More information can be found in the call for papers here: