Emma Schwarz is a Ph.D. student in the University of Pittsburgh’s Slavic Languages and Literatures program. She received a B.A. with Honors in Computer Science/Russian Language & Literature from the New College of Florida and an M.A. in Slavic Languages and Literatures from the University of Pittsburgh. Her research interests include digital humanities, computational philology, and the early Russian novels of Vladimir Nabokov.
Dasha Prokhorova is a Ph.D. student in the University of Pittsburgh’s Slavic Languages and Literatures program. She received a B.A. in Anthropology and Russian Language and Literature from the University of Virginia and an M.A. from New York University in Media, Culture and Communication. Her current research interests include late and post-Soviet culture, émigré literature, cultural memory, diaspora studies and Soviet-Latin American relations.
Ekaterine Kotrikadze is a Russian and Georgian journalist, tv-presenter and media manager. She is news director at Dozhd TV channel (TV Rain), former editor-in-chief of the RTVI TV network, and Georgian TV channel PIK.
Mikhail Itkin is an incoming PhD student in the interdisciplinary Film Studies and Slavic program at the University of Pittsburgh. His current research interests include late-Soviet and postmodernist literature and visual culture, narratology, and social philosophy. He published works on Vladimir Korolenko, Anna Akhmatova, Joseph Brodsky, David Samoilov, and made presentations on international conferences. He is also the editor and regular contributor to the journal K! Film Criticism and Theory, based in Saint Petersburg, Russia.
Oleksandr Frazé-Frazénko is a filmmaker, writer, and musician. His oeuvre includes several hundred films, music videos, and advertising. He authored a dozen books of poetry; in Ukrainian, they are collected in a volume Decadence (2017), in English Happy Lovers (2021). He was the first to have translated Jim Morrison’s poetry into Ukrainian and published it in 2013. he has also translated English poetry of the Restoration Period, including the works of John Rochester. His music discography consists of more than 50 albums. He had a few personal photo exhibitions (Ukraine, and Georgia). His paintings, drawings, and sculptures are in private collections (Ukraine, Poland, Georgia, Germany, Canada, USA). For the first year of the war when Russia invaded Ukraine, he stayed in Ukraine, got involved in a volunteer movement, and worked with foreign journalists as a producer, filmmaker, and journalist to spread the truth about the situation, the context, and the historical background.
llya Budraitskis is a political and social theorist, previously based in Moscow. He recently joined UC, Berkeley as a visiting scholar. He writes regularly for Jacobin, Republic.ru, Colta.ru, Posle.media and other outlets. Budraitskis’s essay collection, Dissidents among Dissidents: Ideology, Politics and The Left in Post-Soviet Russia, was published by Verso in 2022.
Marina Belenky is a theatre art historian and culturologist. She has a long record of running international art projects, including as the Director of Stanislavsky Summer School, affiliated with Harvard University, for 25 years, as well as “Theater Land” in Riga, Latvia and “Acting Playing” in Valencia, Spain. She has produced numerous workshops in Boston, Moscow, New York, Montreal, Valencia, Barcelona and London and developed various international educational ventures.
Anatoli Ulyanov (b.1984) is a Russian-speaking Ukrainian writer born in the Soviet Union and based in Los Angeles. He is best known as an editor for some of Ukraine’s most controversial media outlets, including Proza, Looo.ch, Sho, and DADAKINDER, where he writes about culture and politics. His unconventional opinions on identity, class, sexuality, and history have made him a target of criticism from all sides of the political spectrum.
Sasha Phillips serves as Counsel in Dentons Cohen & Grigsby’s Corporate Practice Group. Sasha’s international background and unyielding commitment to excellence allow her to serve her clients in a wide range of domestic and foreign matters. Sasha regularly works with clients in the manufacturing, robotics, health care, construction, energy, art, and financial services industries. She assists them in a wide range of cases including sanctions compliance, import and export control, DOJ investigations, consumer protection, shareholder actions, data security, contractual disputes, fraud, FCPA, IP, cross-border disputes, and international trade.
Natasha Masharova (b. 1984) is a Ukrainian-born and Los Angeles-based visual artist, photographer, and documentary filmmaker. She was a co-founder and visual editor of several influential art and culture media outlets covering the post-Soviet area (Looo.ch, Proza.com.ua, Sho), and worked as a photographer for various international magazines (Vice, TimeOut, Esquire, etc).
