University of Salento

PhD, tenured researcher and adjunct professor of Russian Language and Translation in the Department of Humanities at the University of Salento, where she has been teaching since 2003. Gloria Politi served as Principal Investigator for the 2015 PRIN (Research Project of National Interest) titled “(De)constructing Myth in Contemporary Women's Literature in Russia and Poland: A Comparative Study”, and is currently the Principal Investigator for the 2022 PRIN project “From Post-Trauma to Ecology: Contemporary Gender Narratives in Slavic Cultural Texts.” As scientific coordinator for research activities funded by the PNRR (National Recovery and Resilience Plan – Project “Digital Strategy and Platforms for Cultural Heritage”), Gloria Politi led the project “Study, Translation, Digitization, and Open Source/Open Access Dissemination of Correspondence Related to the Pilgrims’ Registers in Apulia Originating from the Slavic Area (Archive of the Basilica of Saint Nicholas in Bari)” – part of the Horizon Europe research framework programme. Her research interests range from Russian linguistics to the teaching of Russian as a second language (L2), Russian literature – with a particular focus on the works of contemporary women writers – and translation from a comparative and critical perspective. Her scholarly contributions are published in both Italian and international academic journals. Among her recent works is the monograph “Ljudmila Ulickaja nella letteratura russa contemporanea. Medea oltre Medea” (Lecce, 2024).

Eleonora Gina Gallucci graduated in Languages in 1994 at the University of Salerno with a thesis in Slavic Philology. She continued her philological studies, earning a PhD in Slavic Studies at Sapienza University of Rome in 1999. Between 1993 and 2001, she studied abroad at the Universities of Veliko Tărnovo and Sofia (Bulgaria), Brno (Czech Republic), and in Moscow at the Russian State University for the Humanities (RSUH) and the Institute of the Russian Language of the Russian Academy of Sciences. She has taught Slavic Philology, Russian Language and Translation, and Italian as a Second and Foreign Language (L2/FL) at various universities in Italy (Tor Vergata, Sapienza, Cassino, L’Aquila) and abroad (Russia, in Moscow and Vladimir). While her core research interests lie in Slavic philology—Old Church Slavonic language and literature, textual criticism, and editorial techniques—she has also expanded into new areas such as new media and internet studies, as well as audiovisual translation (AVT). She is a member of AIS (Italian Association of Slavists), served on the editorial board of eSamizdat (www.esamizdat.it) from 2003 to 2009, and was co-founder and longtime president of Altreurope. Passionate about cinema, she has curated Italian film retrospectives in Russia and Russian film events in Italy. She translates from various Slavic languages for journals – mainly in the field of cinema – and has worked in publishing (editing), as well as interpreter and consultant for Russian affairs on behalf of Italian companies and institutions. Since January 1, 2005, she has been a researcher at the University of Salento.

Iryna Shylnikova, PhD, is a lecturer in Russian Language at the Department of Humanities of the University of Salento (Lecce, Italy). From 2017 to 2019, she participated as a researcher in the PRIN project “(De)constructing Myth in Contemporary Women’s Literature in Russia and Poland: A Comparative Study.” Her research focuses on contemporary Russian and Ukrainian women's literature. She is the author of scholarly articles published in academic journals on topics related to the teaching of Russian as a foreign language, as well as Russian- and Ukrainian-language culture and literature. In 2023, she was awarded a one-year research fellowship under the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR) for the project “Digital Strategy and Platforms for Cultural Heritage,” with a study entitled “Study, Translation, Digitization, and Open Source-Open Access Dissemination of Correspondence Related to the Pilgrims’ Registers in Apulia Originating from the Slavic Area (Archive of the Basilica of Saint Nicholas in Bari),” carried out within the Department of Humanities, academic sector SSD L-LIN/21 (Slavic Studies), as part of the Horizon Europe framework programme. She is currently a research fellow within the 2022 PRIN project “From Post-Trauma to Ecology: Contemporary Gender Narratives in Slavic Cultural Texts”.