Where are our graduate alumni now?

2023 | 2020 |2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 20152014 | 2013 | 2012 | 2011 | 2010 | 2009 | 2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005

Our M.A. and Ph.D. graduates find employment in academia, government, non-governmental organizations, and the private sector. They teach in Slavic programs at major universities around the country. They serve as language- and area-studies experts for the U.S. government and other organizations with a policy interest in Eastern Europe. And they serve as translators and regional experts for international businesses. In short, our graduates find many ways to put their degrees to work. Our recent graduates, and where they have gone after leaving us, are listed below.

Are you a recent M.A. or Ph.D. graduate who is not listed here? Or is your employment information outdated? Contact us! We'd love to hear from you.

 

Alumni Spotlight

 

Anastasia Gordienko

Anastasia Gordienko, Ph.D. 

I completed the Ph.D. program in Slavic Literature, Film, and Cultural Studies at OSU’s Department of Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures in 2018. Since graduating, I have served as an Assistant Professor of Russian and Slavic Studies at the University of Arizona, where I have taught a wide range of graduate and undergraduate courses encompassing literature, culture, politics, and language.

 In 2023, I published my first book, Outlaw Music in Russia: The Rise of an Unlikely Genre (UW Press). My time with the OSU Slavic department became formative in many aspects: this rigorous program not only thoroughly prepared me for a successful academic career by providing comprehensive academic training, excellent resources, unparalleled advising, and intellectually stimulating courses, but also allowed me to compile an impressive teaching portfolio. It also stimulated my growth as a scholar and nurtured my professionalism and academic curiosity, thereby paving the way for my professorship. Equally importantly, during my time at OSU, I forged invaluable academic connections and lasting friendships that continue to enrich both my career and personal life.

 

dr. david mcvey

David McVey, Ph.D. 

Ph.D. Slavic Languages, Literatures, and Cultures; M.A., Russian Area Studies; M.A., Geography 

My time in the Slavic Department taught me to be open to people and experiences. I learned how to be attentive to detail. And I can truly understand texts and communicate with clarity.

I am now applying these skills to the position of Research Administrator for Midwestern University at their Glendale, Arizona campus. I help medical researchers from all over the world coordinate ethical, professional research proposals.

 

CAPT James G. Connell, Jr., USN (ret.), Ph.D.

CAPT James G. Connell, Jr., USN (ret.), Ph.D.

What is your current position?

I presently work as Senior Cold War Analyst and Executive Secretary Emeritus of the U.S.-Russia Joint Commission on POW/MIAs (USRJC) in the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA), Arlington, VA 22204

What degree in Russian/Slavic studies did you receive?

The Ohio State University: M.A. '69; Ph.D. '73 (both in Slavic Languages and Literatures).      Also, B.S., U.S. Naval Academy '61; M.A. (Comparative Literature), University of Georgia '67

How did your Slavic studies impact your career?

Slavic studies provided the foundation for two very fulfilling careers: active-duty Navy: Russian language-related duty in Rome, Munich, Washington, USSR (Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty); and thirty years with the USRJC, nine years in Russia with the remainder in Washington with TDYs to Russia, Ukraine, and the Baltics. 

What advice would you give to students studying Russian?

Your most interesting and rewarding career will most likely be in government, particularly in the Foreign Service and intelligence-related agencies.

 

2023

Natalia Sletova, Ph.D.

Dissertation title: L2 writing as a scaffold for L2 speaking grammatical accuracy in a text reconstruction task

Dissertation advisor: Ludmila Isurin

Current Position: Lecturer of the Russian Language and Culture, University of Florida

Ekaterina Tikhonyuk, Ph.D.

Dissertation title: The Intricacies of Russian Media Landscape During the Putin Era

Dissertation advisor: Yana Hashamova

2020

Anna Zaitseva, M.A.

Advisor: Ludmila Isurin

Current Position: Graduate Teaching Associate, Education and Human Ecology, Ohio State University

2019

Jacob Beard, M.A.

Advisor: Angela Brintlinger

Current Position: Program Associate, Global Ties Kansas City

Yuliya Buquoi, Ph.D.

Dissertation title: Influences of Intergenerational Transmission of Autobiographical Memories on Identity Formation in First-Generation Immigrant Children

Dissertation advisor: Ludmila Isurin

Current Position: Assistant Professor of Russian, U.S. Air Force Academy

Seogyoung Gu, M.A.

Advisor: Yana Hashamova

Current Position: Free-lance interpreter/translator

Hope Wilson, Ph.D.

Dissertation title: Teaching language and culture through online ethnographic exploration

Dissertation advisor: Ludmila Isurin

Current position: Learning Scientist, Duolingo

Izolda Wolski-Moskoff, Ph.D.

Dissertation title: Case in Heritage Polish: A Cross-Generational Approach

Dissertation advisor: Ludmila Isurin

Current position: Visiting Lecturer and Basic Language Coordinator - Polish and Russian, University of Illinois-Chicago

2018

Ray Alston, Ph.D.

Dissertation title: Singing the Myths of the Nation: Historical Themes in Russian Nineteenth-Century Opera

Dissertation advisor: Alexander Burry

Anastasiia Gordiienko, Ph.D.

Dissertation title: Russian Shanson as Tamed Rebel: From the Slums to the Kremlin

Dissertation advisor: Helena Goscilo

Current position: Assistant Professor, University of Arizona

Ekaterina Kolbasova, M.A.

Advisor: Andrea Sims

Current position: Wrike

Michael O'Brien, M.A.

Advisor: Helena Goscilo

2017

Nina Haviernikova, Ph.D.

Dissertation title: Dialect Contact in Slovakia

Dissertation advisor: Brian Joseph, Daniel Collins (co-advisor)

Current Position: Program Coordinator, Foreign Languages Individualized Instruction Learning Center, Ohio State University

Katie Lane, M.A.

Advisor: Yana Hashamova

Current position: Graduate Student in Library and Information Science, Rutgers University

Greg Ormiston, Ph.D.

Dissertation title: The Prison Worlds of Dostoevskii, Tolstoi, and Chekhov

Dissertation advisor: Alexander Burry

Current Position: Systems Administrator, Weifield Group Contracting

2016

Mike Furman, Ph.D.

Dissertation title: Playing with the punks: St. Petersburg and the DIY ethos

Dissertation advisor: Jennifer Suchland

Current position: Consortia Account Manager, Oxford University Press

Jeff Parker, Ph.D.

Dissertation title: Inflectional complexity and cognitive processing: An experimental and corpus-based investigation of Russian nouns

Dissertation advisor: Andrea Sims

Current position: Associate Professor, Department of Linguistics and English Language, Brigham Young University

Chen Zhang, Ph.D.

Dissertation title: Russian Writers Confront the Myth: The Absence of the People’s Brotherhood in Realist Literature

Dissertation advisor: Alexander Burry

2015

Helen Myers, Ph.D.

Dissertation title: A semiotic revaluation of Russian prose fiction in modern Russian film adaptations

Dissertation advisors: Alexander Burry and Brian Joseph

Current position: Assistant Professor of Teaching, Department of Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures, Ohio State University

Ryan Perkins, M.A.

Advisor: Andrea Sims

Lauren Ressue, Ph.D.

Dissertation title: Reciprocity in Russian: An investigation of the syntactic, semantic and pragmatic interfaces

Dissertation advisors: Andrea Sims and Judith Tonhauser

Current position: Public Health Analyst, Vermont Department of Health

Kate White, Ph.D.

Dissertation title: Second language vocabulary acquisition in context

Dissertation advisor: Ludmila Isurin

Current position: Assistant Director for Language Learning Services in the Student Success Center, Temple University, Philadelphia

Justin (Dusty) Wilmes, Ph.D.

Dissertation title: Projecting Social Concerns: Ethical Visions in Russian Independent Cinema

Dissertation advisor: Yana Hashamova

Current position: Assistant Professor of Russian Studies, Eastern Carolina University

2014

Ellen Bunker, Ph.D.

Dissertation title: A Cross-Cultural Study of Politeness and Facework among Russian, American, and Russian-American Cultural Groups

Dissertation advisor: Daniel Collins

Sara Ceilidh Orr, Ph.D.

Dissertation title: The Scrivener De-Scribed: Logos and Originals in Nineteenth-Century Copyist Fiction

Dissertation advisor: Alexander Burry

Current position: Game Designer for Moonstream

Katerina Rouzina, M.A.

Advisor: Brian Joseph

Current position: Linguistic Project Manager at Google via Artech

Yuliya Walsh, Ph.D.

Dissertation title: Forms of Address in Contemporary Ukrainian Newspapers: Morphology, Gender and Pragmatics

Dissertation advisors: Daniel Collins and Charles Gribble

Current position: Adjunct faculty, Wright State University

2013

Andrew Kier, Ph.D.

Dissertation title: The semantics of Russian 'about' prepositions: A corpus-based study

Dissertation advisor: Daniel Collins

Current position: Metadata specialist and cataloguer, Online Computer Library Center (OCLC)

Anastasia Kostetskaya, Ph.D.

Dissertation title: The water of life and the life of water: The metaphor of world liquescence in the poetry, painting and film of the Russian Silver Age

Dissertation advisors: Irene Delic and Helena Goscilo

Current position: Assistant Professor, University of Hawai'i Manoa

David McVey, Ph.D.

Dissertation title: Man Enough: Multiple Masculinities in the Films of Pavel Lungin?

Dissertation advisor: Helena Goscilo

Current position: Research Administrator, Midwestern University

Robert Mulcahy, Ph.D.

Dissertation title: A hero of two times: Erast Fandorin and the refurbishment of genre

Dissertation advisor: Helena Goscilo

Current position: Visiting Assistant Professor, College of William & Mary

Olha Rudich, Ph.D.

Dissertation title: Freed by ideology, imprisoned by reality: The representation of women in the cinemas of the thaw and perestroika

Dissertation advisor: Yana Hashamova

Current position: Russian language instructor, NASA

Taylor White, M.A.

Advisor: Angela Brintlinger

Current position: Graduate Program Coordinator, School of Environment and Natural Resources, Ohio State University 

2012

Ljiljana Đurašković, Ph.D.

Dissertation title: The Expression of Possession in Medieval Russian Legal Language: Contextual Factors in the Selection of Alternatives

Dissertation advisor: Daniel Collins

Current position: Lecturer, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of Pittsburgh

Monica Vickers, M.A.

Advisor: Daniel Collins

2011

Maria Alley, Ph.D.

Dissertation title: Investigating processing in processing instruction

Dissertation advisors: Daniel Collins and Wynne Wong (French & Italian)

Current position: Senior Lecturer and Foreign Language Coordinator, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of Pennsylvania

Živojin Jakovljević, Ph.D.

Dissertation title: Editing in a sixteenth-century Serbian manuscript (HM.SMS.280): A lexical analysis with comparison to the Russian original

Dissertation advisor: Daniel Collins

Current position: Priest, Serbian Orthodox Church / Lecturer for Serbian Language and Literature, Cleveland State University

Jasmine Lin, M.A.

Advisor: Helena Goscilo

Current position: Center Administrator, Nazarian Center for Israel Studies, University of California Los Angeles

Kathleen Manukyan, Ph.D.

Dissertation title: The Russian word in song: Cultural and linguistic issues of classical singing in the Russian language

Dissertation advisor: Irene Delic

Current position: Instructor, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of Pittsburgh

Galina Naumenko, Ph.D.

Dissertation title:

Dissertation advisor: Irene Delic

Current position: Freelance translator

Marina Pashkova, M.A.

Advisor: Andrea Sims

James Joshua Pennington, Ph.D.

Dissertation title: The synchrony and diachrony of Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian adjectival long-form allomorphy (ALFA)

Dissertation advisor: Brian Joseph

Current Position: Visiting Professor of Linguistics, Linguistics Program of the Department of English at Miami University

Allison Potvin, Ph.D.

Dissertation title: The body in transition: Physical transformation in postmodern Russian literary and visual culture

Dissertation advisor: Angela Brintlinger

Current position: Associate Engineer, Roto

Robert Reynolds, M.A.

Advisor: Andrea Sims

Current position: Assistant Research Professor of Digital Humanities, Brigham Young University

Susan Vdovichenko, Ph.D.

Dissertation title: The beholder's eye: How self-identification and linguistic ideology affect shifting language attitudes and language maintenance in Ukraine

Dissertation advisor: Ludmila Isurin

Current position: Assistant Professor of Russian and Director of the Non-major-language Program, Washington & Jefferson College

2010

Elizabeth Angerman, Ph.D.

Dissertation title: "The idea of eternal return": Palimpsests and national narratives in Czechoslovak New Wave literary adaptations
Dissertation advisor: Yana Hashamova

Current position: Program Manager for International Partnership, Ohio State University

Daniel Davidson, M.A.

Advisors: Daniel Collins and Andrea Sims

Current position: Analyst (Russian language specialist), Department of Defense

Magdalena Gruszczynska-Harrison, Ph.D.

Dissertation title: Language transfer and beyond: Pro-drop, code switching, and acquisition milestones in bilingual Polish-English children

Dissertation advisor: Ludmila Isurin

Current position: Visiting Lecturer in Polish, Brown University

Marcela Michalkova, Ph.D.

Dissertation title: Gender asymmetries in Slovak personal nouns

Dissertation advisor: Daniel Collins

Current position: Assistant Professor of American Studies, Institute of British and American Studies, Prešov University (Slovakia)

Zoran Panjak, M.A.

Advisor: Irene Delic

Current position: Media Manager, St. Peterburg's International Economic Forum

Shelley Price Cade, M.A.

Advisor: Daniel Collins

Current position: Eurasian Projects Coordinator; Terrorism, Transnational Crime and Corruption Center, George Mason University

Sunnie Rucker-Chang, Ph.D.

Dissertation title: Cultural formation in post-Yugoslav Serbia: Divides, debates, and dialogues

Dissertation advisor: Yana Hashamova

Current position: Associate Professor, Ohio State University

Larysa Stepanova, Ph.D.

Dissertation title: Representation of national identity on Ukrainian business websites

Dissertation advisors: Daniel Collins and Charles Gribble

Current position: Language Program Coordinator, Department of Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures, Ohio State University

2009

Xinran Dong, Ph.D.

Dissertation title: Requests in academic settings in American English, Russian and Chinese

Dissertation advisor: Daniel Collins and Marjorie Chan

Current position: Chinese Lecturer, Fordham University

Kirk Jorgensen, M.A.

Advisor: Ludmila Isurin

Current position: Sycamore Street Press

Miriam Whiting, Ph.D.

Dissertation title: Globalism vs. nationalism: The pragmatics of business naming in Tomsk, Russia

Dissertation advisor: Daniel Collins

2008

Jason Algood, M.A.

Advisor: Charles Gribble

Andrei Cretu, Ph.D.

Dissertation title: Modelling the text: Lurii Lotman's information-theoretic approach revisited

Dissertation advisor: Irene Delic

Current position: Assistant Professor of Teaching, Department of Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures, Ohio State University

S. Spencer Robinson, M.A.

Advisor: Charles Gribble

Current position: Analyst (Russian language specialist), Department of Defense

Yevgeniya Tyurikova, Ph.D.

Dissertation title: Expression of politeness/impoliteness via the aspectual forms in the imperative in Russian

Dissertation advisors: Daniel Collins and Charles Gribble

2007

Teresa Kuruc, M.A.

Advisor: Alexander Burry

Current position: Russian Instructor, Foreign Language Department, Grossmont College (El Cajon, CA)

Mark Nuckols, Ph.D.

Dissertation title: Case variation in Czech and Russian: Implications for the transitivity hypothesis

Dissertation advisor: Daniel Collins

Current position: Translator, Watching America

2006

Thaddeus Fortney, M.A.

Advisor: Angela Brintlinger

Current position: Instructor, Department of Focused Inquiry, VCU

Oxana Skorniakova, M.A.

Advisor: Brian Joseph

Current position: Russian Lecturer, Pace University

2005

Bojan Belić, Ph.D.

Dissertation title: Complement verb variation in present-day Serbian

Dissertation advisor: Brian Joseph

Current position: Senior Lecturer and Languages Coordinator, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of Washington

Tania Ivanova-Sullivan, Ph.D.

Dissertation title: Lexical variation in the Slavonic Thekara texts: Semantic and pragmatic factors in medieval translation praxis

Dissertation advisor: Daniel Collins

Current position: Associate Professor of Russian, Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, University of New Mexico

Julia Mikhailova, Ph.D.

Dissertation title: Comparison of interpersonal and presentational description in Russian oral proficiency testing

Dissertation advisor: Brian Joseph

Current position: Senior Lecturer in Russian and Russian Language Program Coordinator, University of Toronto

Anastasia Smirnova, M.A.

Advisor: Brian Joseph

Current position: Assistant Professor of Linguistics, San Francisco State University