Uku Lember
Rectorate
Introduction
Tallinn University Vice-Rector for Academic Affairs Uku Lember graduated with a degree in finance from the University of Tartu and studied history at Master’s and PhD level at Central European University in Budapest. He has been a visiting doctoral student at Cornell University in the USA and received scholarships for studies at institutions in Bucharest, Coimbra, Kyiv, London, and Uppsala. Uku Lember’s major research areas are the history of the Soviet Union, memory politics, and nationalism. His doctoral dissertation centred around Soviet-era marriages between Russians and Estonians. Recently, he has engaged in family histories and changing memories in Ukraine during the current military conflict, as well as Soviet-era queer history in Estonia. Uku Lember has worked at Tallinn University since 2016. For the past five years, he served as Director of the School of Humanities. Since 2026, he has served as Vice-Rector for Academic Affairs at Tallinn University.
Areas of research
19th- and 20th-century history, comparative history, authoritarian regimes
history of Eastern Europe, Russia, and Ukraine, especially during the Soviet period
history of nationalism, oral history and the biographical method, social memory