Graduate Students

Alex Braslavsky
Ph.D. candidate in Slavic Languages and Literatures
Alex Braslavsky earned her B.A. in English Literature and Russian Language and Culture from Columbia University in 2018. As an undergraduate, she began delving into Russian and French poetry and studied abroad in Moscow and Paris. She then went on to...
Headshot of Alex Braslavsky weatring round glasses and a patterned shirt, with a blue background.

Joanna Burdzel
Ph.D. candidate in Slavic Languages and Literatures
Joanna earned her B.A. in Russian and Studies in World Literature from the College of the Holy Cross in 2019, with a minor in philosophy. As an undergraduate she studied at the Russian State University for the Humanities in Moscow, and at the Jagiellonian...
Joanna Burdzel

Nathan Goldstone
Ph.D. candidate in Slavic Languages and Literatures
Nathan is a second-year PhD candidate from Waukesha, Wisconsin. His research interests include mechanical investigations into literary narrative (in short, how fiction works) and the nexus of aesthetics and politics in 20 th - and 21 st -century Slavic...
Nathan Goldstone

Anna Ivanov
Ph.D. candidate in Slavic Languages and Literatures
Anna Ivanov (she/her/hers) received her B.A. in Russian, Linguistics, and Data Science at Macalester College in 2018. She has studied in Russia through the NSLI-Y scholarship, ACTR RLASP, and Middlebury Schools Abroad. She is currently a Media & Design...
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Natasha Kadlec
Ph.D. candidate in Slavic Languages and Literatures
Natasha studies the cultural history of the Soviet Union. Her research investigates Soviet narratives on world literature and their interaction with national politics, focusing on Belarus, Estonia and Russia. She examines official Soviet cultural...
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Barbara Kukushkina
Ph.D. candidate in Slavic Languages and Literatures
Barbara (Varvara) Kukushkina is an amateur violinist, an entomology enthusiast, and a budding scholar of Russian modernism from Cherepovets, Russia. She obtained her bachelor’s degree in Comparative Literature and Linguistics from the Higher School of...
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Paul Morrison
Ph.D. candidate in Slavic Languages and Literatures
Paul is a PhD candidate from Scotland in the UK. He earned his undergraduate degree in German and Russian Studies from the University of Edinburgh in 2020, which entailed periods of study abroad at Moscow State University and the University of Tübingen...
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Hope Nicholson
Ph.D. candidate in Slavic Languages and Literatures
Hope Nicholson earned her BA in Modern Languages from the University of Oxford in 2023 and an MPhil in Comparative Literature from the University of Cambridge a year later. During her undergraduate degree, Hope studied Russian literature from 1100 to the...
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Jemma Paek
Ph.D. Candidate in Slavic Languages and Literatures
Jemma Paek graduated from the University of Oxford in 2018 with a BA in Spanish and Russian, studying language and literature with a specialist paper on Literature and the Visual Arts. In 2020, Jemma returned to Oxford University to complete a Masters in...
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Sydney Stotter
Ph.D. candidate in Slavic Languages and Literatures
Sydney entered the doctoral program in Slavic Languages and Literatures in the fall of 2022 after receiving a master's degree from the REECA program. Her research interests include the politics of historical memory, film and literature of the Second World...
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