Primary academic interests encompass various aspects of Soviet and post-Soviet collective identity, and the dynamics and shifts within national and post-Soviet identities. Analysis is centred on the transformation of collective identity, the impact of political regimes on these transformations, and the resilience of identities, encompassing phenomena such as hybridity of collective identities and the influence of emotional regimes on identity formation. The most recent research project was Politics of Death in Soviet Lithuania: Meaning, Rituals, Symbols, Emotions . The project resulted in the publication of a monograph in Lithuanian. An English-language monograph is currently in preparation, with the working title Mourning and Remembrance of the Dead in Soviet Lithuania. It highlights the role of collective memory in Soviet efforts to transform society’s relationship with death and the remembrance of the dead.

Putinaitė, N (2025) Mirties politika sovietinėje Lietuvoje: Prasmės, ritualai, simboliai, jausmai (The Politics of Death in Soviet Lithuania: Meanings, Rituals, Symbols, Emotions), Vilnius: Naujasis Židinys-Aidai.

Putinaitė, N. (2025) ‘Ordinary grieving in the Lithuanian SSR: Atheization, hybrid meanings and emotional response’, The Soviet and Post-Soviet Review, 52:3, 328–54.

Putinaitė, N. (2023) ‘Suffering, death, and homeland in the memoirs of Lithuanian deportees’, in S. Saramo & U. Savolainen (eds) The Legacies of Soviet Repression and Displacement: The Multiple and Mobile Lives of Memories, London: Routledge, 135-51.