Current graduate students

Supervisor: Li-Shih Huang

My MA research combines applied linguistics and Slavic studies, focusing on Russian language teaching and learning in Canadian tertiary education. More specifically, my work looks at mixed classes, which are those that enroll both heritage and non-heritage language learners. Within this scope, I examine instructors' pedagogical approaches and strategies for addressing diverse learner needs, as well as the challenges they encounter in doing so. To gain a better understanding of this context, I also investigate how learners perceive these instructional approaches and strategies in relation to their own learning needs, along with the challenges they report in these shared environments. The aim of this work is not only to document current classroom practices and perceptions but also to identify where there may be (mis)alignment between instructors and learners, and to propose recommendations to better support all stakeholders. In addition to this research, I am also a Russian language learner myself.

Supervisor: Alexandra D'Arcy

Lillian Abells is a sociolinguist with a focus on dialects, social stigma, and language in fiction. Their thesis research is about the use of real-world linguistic bias as characterization tools in fantasy settings. They received a Bachelor's in English from CalPoly San Luis Obispo with a minor in Linguistics. 

Supervisor: Martha McGinnis

My name is Caleb Gordon and I’m currently enrolled in the MA Linguistics Program at UVic. I completed a BSc in Linguistics in 2024, also at UVic. My MA research is focused on aspect and pluractionality in Tsova-Tush, an endangered Northeast Caucasian language spoken by about 300 people in the eastern European country of Georgia. In that research, I ask questions like "What (sometimes surprising!) restrictions exist on different kinds of verbs?", "How do verb meanings interact with other parts of the grammar?", and "What range of meanings is it possible for verbs to express in this language?". My research interests include fieldwork, argument structure, psych-verbs, the interpretation of states and of changes of state, and the syntax-semantics interface more broadly.

Supervisor: Moustapha Fall

Supervisor: Pierre-Luc Landry/Sara Harvey

Supervisor: Catherine Caws

Supervisor: Pierre-Luc Landry/Sara Harvey

Fanie Pigeon-Decelles s’intéresse à la Médée d’Euripide dans le théâtre contemporain. Cette magicienne barbare et étrangère, longtemps reconnue dans les productions académiques et théâtrales pour son terrible acte d’infanticide, sa jalousie et sa violence extrême, connaît aujourd’hui une resurgence notable sur la scène, où elle apparaît telle une allégorie féministe et politique. C’est dans cette perspective que Fanie examine les fragments du mythe médéen qui interrogent l’exil au féminin, la condition d’immigrée et la portée politique de ses gestes funèbres, en adoptant une approche postcoloniale et féministe à travers quatre réécritures théâtrales contemporaines:  Jogging: Théâtre en chantier de Hanane Hajj Ali (Liban), Médée poème enragé de Jean-René Lemoine (Haïti/France), I M E D E A de Sulayman Al Bassam (Koweït) et The Hungry Woman de Cherríe Moraga (Mexique). 

Supervisor: Serhy Yekelchyk

Olivia Kozlovic received her BA in History and Germanic Studies from the University of Victoria in 2025. Her thesis focuses on the entangled memory of the Holocaust and the Yugoslav Wars at memorial sites in Croatia, Serbia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina, in order to understand how the memories of these two events impact one another in the public memory landscape of the Yugoslav successor states. 

Supervisor: Dr. Kristin Semmens

Anika Luteijn received her BA in History at the University of Victoria in 2023 and is now pursuing her MA in Holocaust Studies. Her research project investigates her own family’s involvement in the Dutch resistance, the importance of connection and relationships in the pursuit of survival, and seeks to bring to light the stories of the Jewish women and other persecuted individuals who hid with members of the family throughout the war.

Supervisor: Serhy Yekelchyk

Alisha completed her undergraduate degree at UVic in 2017 and was the Department of Germanic and Slavic Studies’ inaugural honours student in the slavic studies stream. She returned to the department to pursue graduate work on the biopolitics of Russia’s illegal war of attrition on Ukraine. 

The war has raised questions globally about the resilience of existing democratic institutions in the face of modern threats from autocratic powers, and the effectiveness of the current techniques for confronting them. Her research aims to engage with these concerns through critical theory. 

When not nosing through stacks of research Alisha can be found being creative in the kitchen, going for walks with the best dog on the planet, or pursuing ersatz creative writing endeavours. She lives in Kamloops and misses the coast. 

Slava Ukraine!