Dr. Marija Norkūnaitė

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Marija is a Vilnius University Foundation postdoctoral fellow at the Institute of International Relations and Political Science. Marija graduated from Vilnius University with a BA in Political Science (Cum Laude), she was awarded an MPhil in Russian and East European Studies from the University of Oxford (Distinction), and defended her DPhil (PhD) thesis in Area Studies (Russia and East Europe) without corrections there in 2023.

Marija works in the field of political and economic anthropology, and studies changing relationships between people and the state in Eastern Europe and the Baltics. For her doctoral thesis, she looked at Russian-speaking communities and the desire for a social contract in Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. Her broader research interests include the anthropology of the state, (post-)socialism, neoliberalism, as well as citizenship, work, and taxes.

Marija is also a member of the Anthropology of Tax Network, with which she is currently working on the “Tax, Society, and People” knowledge exchange project, developing educational materials that introduce anthropological concepts on tax and taxation into citizenship education.

Selected conference papers:

1. “That was a real khoziain:” Economy as the ideal form of governance in a former socialist town in the Baltics. European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA), Anthropologies of State Network (AnthroState) conference “Future States,” 30–31 August 2023, Rīga Stradiņš University, Latvia.

2. “Quieter than water, lower than grass:” On silence in a former socialist town in the Baltics. The 15th Conference on Baltic Studies in Europe (CBSE), 15-17 June 2023, Vytautas Magnus University, Lithuania.

3. “And then Prince Lemon came up with a new tax on air:” Tax (non-)compliance in a former socialist city in the Baltics. International Society for Ethnology and Folklore (SIEF) 15th Congress, 19-24 June 2021, University of Helsinki, Finland (online).

4. “Why not simply residents of Estonia?:” Studying the “other” in the Baltics. The Association of Social Anthropologists of the UK’s (ASA) 2021 conference, 29 March – 2 April 2021, St Andrews University, United Kingdom (online).

5. Thinking about the “the State” in a planned socialist town. Conference “Genealogies and Positionalities of Thinking the State.” Inaugural meeting EASA Anthropologies of the State Network (AnthroState), 30 October – 1 November 2019, Leiden University, the Netherlands.

6. Perceptions of the State: The Case of a Baltic Mono-town. The Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES) Summer Convention, 14-16 June 2019, Zagreb University, Croatia.

7. Imagining “the State” in the Baltic mono-town. Fourth Annual Tartu Conference on Russian and East European Studies, 9-11 June 2019, University of Tartu, Estonia.

Membership of international organisations, editorial boards, international working groups, etc. 

Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies (AABS)
The Anthropology of Tax Network
The EASA network on Anthropologies of the State