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Research fellow, lecturer. Vilnius University Fund scholarship holder
Address: Universiteto 5, LT-01122 Vilnius
Phone number: +370 5 268 7235, +370 5 219 32 47
Consultation hours: Appointment by e-mail
Fields of research
- Gender studies
- Motherhood studies
- Eastern European studies
- Gender and Language
- Sociolinguistics
Courses taught
- Contemporary Motherhood and Fatherhood (ENG)
- Feministinės kritikos pagrindai (Introduction to Feminist Critical Theory) (BA) at Vilnius University, Lithuania
- Kalba ir lytis: nuo gramatikos iki politikos (MA) (EN)
- Kultūrinės lyties ir šeimos reprezentacijos (MA) (EN)
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Lithuanian Culture and Literature (BA course in English) at Vilnius University, Lithuania
PUBLICATIONS
Articles and book chapters
- Bisigirskaitė, I. (2024). Mothers Challenging ‘unsafe’ Birth: A Matricentric Feminist Perspective on Maternal Activism in Lithuania. Journal of Mother Studies, (9). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14186542
- Bisigirskaite, Ieva. Choosing a Surname of Her Own: Non(Neo)-Traditional Femininities in Contemporary Lithuania. 2021, University of Zurich, Faculty of Arts. https://www.zora.uzh.ch/id/eprint/205125/
- Bisigirskaitė, Ieva. “Neoliberal discourse in self-naming practices of contemporary Lithuanian women.” Neoliberal Discourse and Gender Equality: Proceedings Vol. 2 of the 5th International Conference on Gender Studies, Famagusta, North Cyprus, March 25-27, 2015. Edited by Seda Orbay Yücel, and Süheyla Üçışık Erbilen, Eastern Mediterranean University-Centre for Women’s Studies, 2015, pp. 1-9.
- Gradskova, Y., Bisigirskaitė, I. & Yazdanpanah, S. (Book manuscript in review, expected 2026). “Good Mothers” and (Nation)alisms: The Cases of Lithuania, Authoritarian Russia, and Postsocialist Migrant Mothers in Sweden. Central University Press (CEU Press).
RESEARCH AND OTHER ACTIVITIES
PhD dissertation
- Bisigirskaitė, Ieva. Choosing a surname of her own: non(neo)-traditional femininities in contemporary Lithuania. 2021, Ciuricho Universitetas. Disertacija [https://www.zora.uzh.ch/id/eprint/205125/]
Research projects
- October 2025 - April 2026. Research Supervisor. Project title: “Žemaitės (re)konstrukcijos šiuolaikinėje Lietuvos kultūroje: reprezentacijų kaitos analizė” (Žemaitė's (Re)constructions in Contemporary Lithuanian Culture: An Analysis of the Change in Representations). Grant for student’s research projects during the semester. Funded by Lithuanian Research Council
- May 2025 – Dec 2026. Principal investigator. Project title: “Navigating Unconventional Childbirth in Lithuania: Choice, Risk, and Medical Perspectives on Home Birth and Elective C-Sections” (with Ugnė Gudžinskaitė and Živilė Sabonytė). Vilnius University Young Researchers’ Grant. Funded by Vilnius University
- January 2022 - December 2024. Researcher. Project title: “Maternity in time of ‘traditional values’ and femonationalism”. Research project with Dr. Yulia Gradskova (PI) (Södertörn University, Stockholm) and Dr. Soheyla Yazdanpanah (Södertörn University, Stockholm). Grant for group research. Funded by The Baltic Sea Foundation (Stockholm, Sweden)
- March 2015 - September 2018. Doctoral researcher. Project title: “New femininities in post-communist societies”. Forschungskredit scholarship for the PhD project. Funded by University of Zurich, Switzerland
Conferences
- Roundtable participant (July 21-25, 2025). “Nationalisms and 'good motherhood' – from disruption and cooptation to violation of women’s rights?” XI World Congress of The International Council for Central and East European Studies (ICCEES), University College London, London, UK. Chair: Melanie Ilic. Participants: Yulia Gradskova, Ieva Bisigirskaitė, Soheyla Yazdanpanah, Hana Hašková, Andrea Peto.
- Bisigirskaitė, I. (June 11-13, 2025). “Naming the Invisible: Navigating Kinship and Naming Practices in Lithuanian Same-Sex Partnerships.” Tartu Conference on East European and Eurasian Studies, Tartu, Estonia.
- Bisigirskaitė, I. (2024, October 31 - November 1). “Naming, Kinship and Resistance: Navigating Female Surname Conventions in Same-Sex Partnerships in Lithuania.” The Baltic Sexualities in Global Perspective Conference (virtual), BASEES Study Group on the Baltic States.
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Bisigirskaitė, Ieva. “Pabaigos pradžia: lietuviškų moterų pavardžių reformų analizė iš feministinės perspektyvos” (The Beginning of the End: An Analysis of Lithuanian Women's Surname Reforms from a Feminist Perspective), Vilnius University, VU TSPMI, March 28, 2024. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MMw9pFZ1tA&t=1s
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Bisigirskaitė, I. (2024, March 22-24). “Challenging ‘Safe’ Birth: A Feminist Perspective on Maternal Activism in Lithuania”. Threads of Connection Conference: ‘Sorry/Not Sorry: Confronting mother (and other) blame–healing & resistance in contemporary culture and beyond,’ St. Petersburg, Florida, USA.
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“Challenging ‘Safe’ Birth: A Feminist Perspective on Maternal Activism in Lithuania.” Threads of Connection Conference, “Sorry/Not Sorry: Confronting mother (and other) blame–healing & resistance in contemporary culture and beyond,” St. Petersburg, Florida, 22-24.03.2024
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“Mothers We Care For And Mothers We Care About: Maternal Activism In Lithuania.” MotherNet Final Conference 2024: Thinking through Motherhood: Images, Experiences and Narratives Across Time, Vilnius, 23-25.01.2024
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“Maternalism in Post-transition.” Panel presentation at the 55th Annual Convention of the Association for Slavic, East European, & Eurasian Studies (ASEEES), Panel: Mothers’ Political and Social Role in East European History and Present, Philadelphia, 11.30-12.03.2023
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“Maternalism old and new: redefining ‘good-motherhood’ through state awards for Lithuanian mothers of many children” at the roundtable discussion “Contested Motherhood: between state politics and subjective/material experiences (Lithuania, Russia and Eurasian migrants in Sweden)”. BASEES Annual Conference, Glasgow, 03.31-02.04, 2023
- “The kids are ALL right: Postcolonial Interpretations of Good Motherhood in Lithuania.” From Stabat Mater to Mater Movens: Analysing Discourses on Motherhood, London Centre for Interdisciplinary Research, London, 9- 10.07.2022
- “Decolonizing Birth: A Feminist Reading of Birth Activism in Lithuania”. White Ink, Red Flag: Expressing Maternity in Eastern European Culture, Slavic and Easten European Maternal Studies Research Network (SEEMS), Exeter, 9.07.2022
- “Constructing global femininities: Lithuanian women talk about their non- suffixed marital surnames”. 11th biennial conference of the International Gender and Language Association (IGALA11), Queen Mary University of London, London, 22-24.06. 2021
- “Refusing the name of the mother-[in- law]: Lithuanian women talk about their feminist surname”. 9th Conference Narrative Matters 2018: The ABC’s of Narrative, Enschede, 2-5.07.2018
- “Neoliberal discourse in self-naming practices of contemporary Lithuanian women”. 5th International Conference of Gender Studies: Neoliberal Discourse and Gender Equality, Famagusta, 25- 27.03.2015
- “Gender and Language Ideologies: the Lithuanian female surname as a National Frontier”. Interdisciplinary Gender Studies Research Colloquium at the University of Zurich, 06.11.2019
- “Nationalism as a discursive strategy in self-naming practices by contemporary Lithuanian women”. 2nd International Graduate Workshop “Family Narratives/National(istic) Narratives”, University of Zurich, 9-10.06.2015.
Other scientific activities
- Member of “MotherNet” - a cross- disciplinary netwrork for motherhood studies
- Member of International Gender and Language Association (IGALA) since 2020