Mikhail Vodopyanov

I teach a variety of language-focussed subjects, such as grammar, mixed skills, translation, and oral Russian language classes, to both sub-honours and honours students. Our core texbook for sub-honours modules, Colloquial Russian (Routledge), has been recently published with my revisions to include new pedagogical developments in EDI and decolonisation in teaching Russian as a foreign language. 

My background is in linguistics, intercultural communication studies, multimodal discourse analysis, and memory studies, with a particular focus on discursive construction of memory of the Soviet past in contemporary Russia.

I hold a degree in Translation Studies from the University of Edinburgh, where I focussed on literary translation, translation and censorship, and translation and conflict. My dissertation investigated translation of conceptual and matrix metaphors in postmodern fiction of the contemporary Russian writer and public intellectual Tatiana Tolstaya, of the Tolstoy family.

As a trustee of the Scotland-Russia Forum (Edinburgh), I participate in arranging its various cultural and outreach activities and edit the book review section of The Forum, a culture-focussed magazine issued by the SRF twice a year.

Other Slavic languages that I have interest in are Old Slavonic and Belorussian.