Alumni
Slavic Department alumni, undergraduate and graduate, have gone on to careers in a wide range of fields, with positions in teaching, business, journalism, government service, and the non-profit sector, among many others. We look forward to featuring profiles of our alumni on this page soon.
If you are an alumna/alumnus and would like to share the successes of your post-UVa career please contact Karen Ryan () with details.
To connect with the community of UVa alumni beyond the Slavic Department, you can also join HoosOnline, a social networking site maintained by the University where you can post photographs, announce events, browse jobs, and add work experience to your profile.
Graduate
Erin Franklin, M.A. 2010
Erin is working toward her Ph.D. in Slavic linguistics at the University of Chicago. Her main language is Russian; Polish is secondary. Her current area of interest is language contact.
Holly Myers, M.A. 2010
After graduating with an M.A. in Slavic Languages and Litertures in spring of 2010, Holly studied at the London School in Bishkek, Kazakhstan in the summer of 2010 on her own. She studied at KIMEP in Almaty, Kirghiz Republic, 2010-2011 through ACTR. She is currently a Ph.D.-track graduate student in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Columbia University. She has not not decided on a dissertation topic, but her research interests include Central Asian literature, zhenskaya proza, and contemporary Russian literature.
Contact:
John Lyles, PhD 2011
John Lyles completed his dissertation, entitled "Confronting the Shadow: The Depiction of Caucasians in Russian Literature and Film" in 2011. He is currently at The College of William and Mary teaching second-year Russian and Dostoevsky. He is continuing his research on Dostoevsky's Poor Folk and on the depiction of Caucasians in Russian literature and film.
Contact:
Undergraduate
Haley Anderson
This fall Haley (Russian and East European Studies major) begins studies at New York University School of Law as an International Law Dean's Scholar. Additionally, her article on the role played by perceptions of the United States in the Russo-Georgian War of 2008 will be published in this semester's foreign language edition of The Oculus.
Melissa Bender
After spending the fall semester of 2009 studying abroad in St. Petersburg, Melissa graduated in May with a double major in Foreign Affairs and Russian and East European Studies. She is currently interning in the Communications department of Management Systems International, an international development company and USAID contractor. Although she is working in (purely-English language) Communications now, she hopes to further her study of Russian within the development community, specifically through democracy, human rights, and governance projects in Russia and the CIS region.
Chelsea Kelly
Chelsea Kelly graduated with a minor in Russian and Eastern European Studies in May 2011. She spent the summer traveling through Asia and co-authoring a publication for the Small Arms Survey, a Geneva-based organization that researches small arms and light weapons policy issues. In the fall, she will begin her 1L year at Yale Law School.
John Pfeiffer
After graduating in May, John moved up to New York City to work for Global Advertising Strategies, a Russian-owned marketing and advertising firm. He found the position while reading an article about Snob magazine, a Russian-American publication, which Global does the ad placements for. He credits His Russian and Eastern European Studies major and his interest in Russian culture for helping him get his position, and he uses his Russian knowledge daily -- reviewing Russian advertisements, translating information into/from Russian for account managers and just small talk around the office. The last three months have been a crash-course in the world of marketing and advertising, but it has been a wonderful experience thus far!