Airi Uuna is currently a Junior Research Fellow at Tallinn University. She has received various stipends and fellowships to study and research in Germany (Free University of Berlin, Humboldt University of Berlin, and the Leibniz Institute of European History in Mainz). In her PhD thesis, which will be defended in 2024, Uuna is investigating the lifeworld inside of the Soviet-Estonian commercial advertising company ERF which used to provide its services to clients – such as, enterprises and state institutions – across the USSR. These commercials and other types of promotional activities were then used to engage audiences in both domestic and international markets.

Timur Guzairov is a research fellow at Tallinn University School of Humanities. He holds a PhD from Tartu University with a dissertation titled “V. Zhukovsky - Historian and Ideologue of Nicholas I’s Reign” (2007). He was a research fellow in the Department of Slavic Studies at Tartu University (2009-2019) and a project assistant (“‘Ideological Geography” of the Western Borderlands of the Russian Empire in Literature”; “Ideology of Translation and Translation of Ideology: Mechanisms of Cultural Dynamics under the Russian Empire and Soviet Power in Estonia in the 19th – 20th Centuries”; “Russian Culture in the Estonian Journals in the Republic of Estonia, 1918–1940”). He is a co-author of “The Chronicle of Russian Cultural and Social Life in Estonia (1918-1940). From History of Russian Emigration” (2 Vols. Tallinn 2017). He was recently a visiting lecturer in the Estonian prisons (project “Estonian-Russian Cultural Sphere”). He currently works on the book “NKVD against Russian-speaking People in Soviet Estonia (Close Reading Investigation Files)”. 

Heli Reimann is an expert in jazz research with a focus on the Cold War/Soviet era and disciplinary intersections between musicology, historiography and cultural studies with numerous peer- reviewed articles and the monograph ‘Tallinn 67 jazz festival: Myths and Memories’  published in the Routledge Transnational Studies in Jazz series.  

Uku Lember is the Director of the School of Humanities of Tallinn University. He graduated with a degree in finance from Tartu University and then studied history at Master and PhD level at Central European University in Budapest. He has received scholarships for studying at Cornell University (USA), University College London (UK) and Uppsala University (Sweden). His major research areas are the history of the Soviet Union, memory politics, nationalism and Queer-history. His doctoral dissertation centred around the Soviet-era marriages between Russians and Estonians (based on biographical interviews). Recently, he has engaged in family histories and changing memories in Ukraine during the current military conflict. Currently, he is working on Soviet era queer histories. In 2015, he was nominated a laureate of the young scientists’ competition of the Estonian Academy of Sciences.

Kristo Nurmis is a historian and an Assistant Professor at the Tallinn University School of Humanities. He recently received his PhD from Stanford University in Russian and Eastern European History with a dissertation titled "Crafting Illiberal Europe: Legitimation, Mobilization, and Mass Influence in the Soviet and Nazi Occupied Baltic States, 1939–1953." His comparative and transnational work sheds light on the processes of legitimation and mobilization under totalitarian and authoritarian regimes of the 20th century.

Terje Toomistu, PhD, is an anthropologist and documentary filmmaker whose core research themes include gender, mobility, and affect. She holds a PhD in Ethnology from the University of Tartu, along with two cum laude MA degrees in Ethnology and Communication Studies. She has conducted extensive research in Indonesia and Russia and has been a Fulbright scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, as well as a visiting fellow at the University of Amsterdam. Her primary research projects focus on gender and sexuality in Indonesia, the Soviet-era hippie movement, and the young Estonian diaspora. She has curated exhibitions and given lectures and seminars at universities worldwide. Combining anthropological research with playful cinematic language, her documentary films – including Wariazone (2011), Soviet Hippies (2017), Veins of the Amazon (2021), and Homing Beyond (2022) – have gained international recognition and media coverage.

Andreas Reimand is a Junior Research Fellow and PhD student at Tallinn University. He received his degree in history from the University of Tartu and a degree in international relations (with an emphasis on the East European region) from the Free University of Berlin, supported by multiple scholarships. His PhD research focuses on the transborder and intercultural connections of the population of the Estonian SSR with the rest of the Soviet Union, specifically how big of a role transborder relations played for the locals.

Maja Soomägi is a Master's student at Uppsala University's Russian and Eurasian Studies programme. Her thesis focused on Estonian women's experiences of travel in the Soviet Union in the 1960s and 1970s. During spring 2025 she is an intern affiliated with the project.