Professor Irena Veisaitė is a Lithuanian theatre scholar, intellectual and human rights activist.
Veisaitė is a Lithuanian Jew and a Holocaust survivor. She earned a doctorate in Leningrad with a dissertation on the poetry of Heinrich Heine, and was a lecturer at the teacher’s college in Vilnius. She has also been head of the Thomas Mann Cultural Centre in Nida, Lithuania. Veisaitė was awarded the Goethe Medal in 2012 for her contribution to the cultural exchange between Germany and Lithuania and sits on the International Academic Board of Advisors for ISGAP, the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy. She is also the long-term President of the Open Society in Lithuania Foundation.