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Polina is a native of St. Petersburg, Russia, where she obtained her dual undergraduate degree in Teaching Chemistry and English in 1997. After that, she taught a variety of EFL courses including Chemistry in English, at Herzen State Pedagogical University of Russia, and in 2000, started in an M.A. TESOL program at the University of Northern Iowa (UNI) as a part of an ongoing exchange between the two schools. At UNI, she also had a teaching assistantship and taught ESL courses for the Culture and Intensive English Program.

Upon her graduation in 2002, Polina returned to St. Petersburg to continue working as an interpreter, teaching EFL, and developing educational software at Herzen University. In 2003, Polina moved back to the United Sates to work for the University of Tennessee at Martin as an intercultural facilitator. Her interest in Intercultural Communication, passion for teaching, and a desire to obtain a Ph.D. in Intercultural Communication and Linguistics brought her to UMBC first as an M.A. student in Intercultural Communication (INCC) and now as a Doctoral student in LLC.

Polina’s research interests are in identity and discourse analysis in a multicultural context. She has conducted several studies on identity realization in narrative plots of non-US-born women and on symbolism and identity negotiation in digital stories. She has also presented her findings at a number of conferences, co-conducted a workshop at the SIETAR-USA conference in 2005, and co-facilitated an intercultural training/orientation session for the UMBC Intercultural Living Exchange program. Polina has also published on teaching Chemistry in English and the role of discourse in Second Language Acquisition in Russia and Colombia.

Polina is interested in an academic career and hopes to teach Linguistics and Intercultural Communication courses at a university after receiving her Ph.D. in LLC.

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