Elina is a part-time PhD candidate in the Department of War Studies, focusing on Strategic Communications. She is also a member of the British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies. Elina works as a senior expert at the NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence in Riga, Latvia, focusing on foreign influence operations in the Nordic-Baltic region, strategic communications terminology, and the future of the information environment. She has been a defence civil servant for eight years, four of which she spent in Georgia running a NATO trust fund for professional development and reform support. Her previous roles include heading the Public Diplomacy Division at the Ministry of Defence of Latvia and working on public diplomacy projects under the NATO Riga Summit 2006 Task Force.

She holds an MA in Communication Science (2006) from the University of Latvia and an MA in Audiovisual and Performing Arts (2020) from the Latvian Academy of Culture, specialising in documentary film directing. Her feature-length documentary film Restless Memories (2020) won the main prize, HERZ, at the international ArtDocFest film festival’s Baltic Focus programme. As part of Baltic Analog Lab’s experimental film school (2024), Elina produced Saturn Shines Over Strenci (Bolex H-16 Reflex/16 mm Kodak 7266 Tri-x Reversal), which was included in the How to Record Light exhibition at the Riga Art Space.

 

Research Interest:

Elina’s research focuses on the period leading up to the proclamation of Latvian independence in 1918. She applies multimodal discourse analysis to study memory construction through a variety of texts: photography, architecture, and porcelain, among others.

• Strategic communications
• Memory construction
• National identity
• Modernism

‘Latvian Independence (1918-1923): A Study in Memory Construction as Strategic Communications’

The story of the First Republic of Latvia (1918-1940) remains one of the core founding myths of the Latvian nation, an expression of Latvian nationalist thought. This research, through case studies surrounding Latvian nation-building and independence (1918), argues that strategic communications is a bricolage of the past telling a story of tomorrow, where memory construction plays a central role. It is about creating and living a documentary fiction at all levels of society – a process that continues in Latvia to this day. This thesis argues for the pivotal role of memory construction in strategic communications, filling an existing gap in scholarship.

 

Supervisors:

• Dr Neville Bolt
• Dr Ruth Deyermond

 

Publications:

“The Role of Strategic Communications in Preventing Hybrid Threats in the Baltic States,” chapter in a publication by the Latvian Institute of International Affairs, Hybrid Threats in the Baltics and Taiwan: Commonalities, Risks and Lessons for Small Democracies, 2021.

“Maintaining the Symbolic Value of NATO: A Strategic Communications Perspective on Changing Understandings of Threat and Deterrence,” chapter in a publication by the Latvian Institute of International Affairs, Deterrence Through Adaptation: The Case Study of Latvia, 2021.

 

Research Centres & Groups:

• King’s Centre for Strategic Communications