I work on transnational and multilingual interactions between English, Polish, Ukrainian, Yiddish and Russophone language cultures. I was the founding convenor of the degree in Comparative Literature which brings together all the languages and cultures taught in the School of Modern Languages at St Andrews.

My research into the multilingual children’s print culture of Ukraine was awarded a St Andrews / Emory Collaborative Grant and I was joint PI on the Ostroh Academy/University of St Andrews Partnership for Advancing the Public Humanities funded by UUKi.

My other research focus is on intersections between global science fiction, exoplanet science, and space policy. I was PI for a STAIRS grant ‘Forecasting Reproduction in Space’ which asked whether science fiction and scientific papers address similar issues around reproduction and agency and investigates the techniques used in literary and scientific writing to communicate complex ethical issues. This follows my earlier research and monograph on Viktor Shklovskii, a literary theorist who aimed to make literary analysis more scientific. I am Co-Director of an interdisciplinary research centre: St Andrews Centre for Exoplanet Science.

I have been an interviewee and researcher on The Cultural Front (BBC Radio 4), The Sunday Feature (BBC Radio 3), the Red Mars Series (BBC Radio 4), and In Our Time with Melvyn Bragg (BBC Radio 4).

I offer research-led Honours modules on the following topics:
-        Children’s Literature in Russian (1900-present day)
-        East European Modernisms
-        Pushkin Out of Context

I am Director of Postgraduate Research and convenor of the School Ethics Committee for Modern Languages.