Ričards Umbraško

Ričards’s research focuses on comparative postcolonial literatures of post-Soviet Eastern Europe, with particular interests in Ukrainian literature and culture, Baltic literatures, media studies, and the cultural politics of empire, decolonization, and cross-border cultural exchange. More broadly, his work interrogates how literary and visual cultures negotiate questions of coloniality, memory, identity, and historiography.

His scholarship has appeared or is forthcoming in Nationalities Papers and the Journal of Global Postcolonial Studies. Beyond academia, Ričards is a contributing writer for Satori, Latvia's leading literary and cultural magazine, and his reviews and essays on Latvian art, society, and politics have appeared in 1843 Magazine (The Economist), New Eastern Europe, and Harvard International Review, and other publications. He has previously spent his summers working at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Latvia and Civil.ge, one of Georgia’s last remaining independent media outlets. 

Ričards received his A.B., summa cum laude, in Slavic Literatures and Cultures and Comparative Literature from Harvard College in 2025. 

Selected Publications

“Dis(b)ordered Lives: Decolonial Temporalities and Borderland Identities in Baltic Documentary Film.” Journal of Global Postcolonial Studies 14, no. 2 (forthcoming 2026).

“Culture Wars: Latgalian Identity Between Soviet and Latvian Colonial Imaginaries (1958–1959).” Nationalities Papers 54, no. 3 (2026): 573–92.