Elīna Vikmane

Assistant professor

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Biography

 

In 2023, Elīna Vikmane earned her doctoral degree (Ph.D.) by defending her dissertation titled "Advancing Cybermuseology: Digital Innovation Diffusion in Latvia’s Museum Sector”. Her dissertation proposal was submitted to the leading academic society in Baltic Studies research, the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies (AABS), and won the Aina Birnitis Dissertation-Completion Fellowship in the Humanities for Latvia 2023, following evaluation by an international committee comprising Kaarel Piirimae (PhD, University of Cambridge), Dovile Budryte (PhD, Old Dominion University), and Daunis Auers (PhD, University College London). This fellowship is awarded to a single researcher whose dissertation pertains to Latvia or Latvians in the humanities and is planned to be defended in Latvia, the USA, Canada, Australia, the UK, Germany, or Sweden. Previously, Elīna Vikmane had received the Emerging Scholar Award 2021 from the Inclusive Museum Network for advancing her dissertation work.

Vikmane has been active in the museum field since 2015, starting when she was delegated by the Boris and Inara Teterev Foundation to initiate the development of the Latvian Museum of Contemporary Art as a member of the foundation's board. In 2020, she was elected to the board of the Latvian Museums Association and the Cultural Heritage Expert Commission of the State Culture Capital Foundation. She was re-elected to the board of the Latvian Museums Association for a second term in 2022 and has been participating in the Digital Transformation Working Group of the Network of European Museum Organisations (NEMO) since that year.

Elīna Vikmane's research interests primarily focus on issues of cultural and specifically cultural heritage participation, as well as the study of the diffusion of digital innovation. Since 2023, she has been implementing a project, "Striving Towards Participatory Engagement in Museums: Inquiry into Museum Education Practice in Latvia (MEET)," which received 97/100% international evaluations in a competition organized by the Latvian Science Council, and participates in the implementation of the National Research Program "The Latvian Cultural Ecosystem as a Resource for State Resilience and Sustainability" (CERS). Previously, she was involved in the implementation of the National Research Program "Cultural Capital as a Resource for Sustainable Development in Latvia" (CARD), conducted a Fundamental and Applied Research project on "The Art of Nationalism: Social Solidarity and Exclusion in Contemporary Latvia," and received funding for research on "The Diversity and Diffusion of Digital Innovations in Latvian Museums" and "Characteristics of a Digitally Innovative Museum" through an internal grant competition at the Latvian Academy of Culture’s Institute of Culture and Arts.

COURSES: Research Methods and Academic Writing; Research Design; Current Debates in Museum Theory; Cultural Heritage governance.

Member's Courses