Sharisa Aidukaitis

Sharisa Aidukaitis is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Virginia. She holds a B.A. in molecular biology from Brigham Young University and an M.A. in Slavic languages and literature from U.Va. Sharisa has successfully completed her written and oral Russian exams, her written and oral comprehensive literature exams, as well as reading proficiency exams in German and Ukrainian. During the 2016-2017 school year, she presented research at four academic conferences on topics of Gulag literature, Pushkin’s ethnic heritage, Ukrainian political poetry, and Soviet film and literature. She spent the summer of 2018 in Eastern Europe doing archival research on Ukrainian poets and crafting her dissertation proposal. Sharissa is enjoying the adventure of motherhood with her son who was born in 2017.