Meilė Lukšienė

Meilutė Julija Lukšienė Matjošaitytė (20 August 1913 – 16 October 2009) was a Lithuanian university professor, cultural historian, and activist.

Educated at Vytautas Magnus University, Lukšienė became a professor of literature in 1944. In 1955, she defended her thesis on the works of Jonas Biliūnas to become the Candidate of Sciences. She headed the Lithuanian Literature Department of Vilnius University in 1951–1958. Due to tightening Soviet censorship after the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, the department was attacked for not devoting enough attention to communist literature and Lukšienė was dismissed from the university in early 1959. She then worked as a research fellow at the Institute of Pedagogy (merged into the ) until retirement in 1997. She researched the history of education focusing on the 19th century. In 1988, she became one of the co-founders of Sąjūdis, a political organization which sought the independence of Lithuania from the Soviet Union. In the early 1990s, she worked on strategic documents outlining the needed education reform in Lithuania.

Biography Early life and education Lukšienė was born on 20 August 1913 in Vienna. Her mother, Julija Biliūnienė, was a dentist and widow of the writer Jonas Biliūnas.