Dr Olga Kenton

Dr Olga Kenton

Department of Modern Languages
Assistant Language Tutor in Russian

Contact details

Address
Department of Modern Languages

I have been teaching Russian at the University of Birmingham since 2019. My main research interests are Russian immigration, Russian émigré literature and creative methodologies in teaching Russian and other foreign languages. 

Qualifications

  • BA/MA in Creative Writing, Maxim Gorky Literature Institute, Moscow

Biography

I joined the Department of Modern Languages at the University of Birmingham in 2019. In 2021 I received an Associate Teaching Fellowship in Higher Education from Advance HE. 

As a PhD student at the Department of Film and Creative Writing, University of Birmingham, I am currently working on my creative non-fiction project that explores the life experiences of Russian immigrants in the UK. As a prose writer and journalist, I have interviewed and published articles with leading Russian and Russian-speaking filmmakers, theatre directors, writers, and artists and has taught Creative Writing Foundation modules to UG students at the Department of Film and Creative Writing at the University of Birmingham (my main publications include interviews with Andrey Zvyagintsev, Dolya Gavanski, Nikolas Pasternak-Slater, Marianna Yarovskaya, novels At the edge of the world, The girl from the house on embankment and Gorillas in green).

Teaching

As a specialist in Russian at all levels, I developed and delivered the Business Russian module to final-year UG students and taught a range of Russian undergraduate modules. I have additionally taught the postgraduate Reading Russian for Researchers module; I have organised and run Russian-language Creative Writing and Russian Journalism clubs for UG students.