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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 Or is your employment information outdated?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, 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.
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.
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