Olena Palko is an assistant professor at Universität Basel. She was awarded her Ph.D. from the University of East Anglia in 2017 and previously held a position of the Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at Birkbeck College, University of London. Her first book, Making Ukraine Soviet. Literature and Cultural Politics under Lenin and Stalin (Bloomsbury Academic, 2020) was awarded the Prize for the Best Book in the field of Ukrainian history, politics, language, literature and culture (2019-20) from the American Association for Ukrainian Studies. Her research interests lie in the field of early Soviet cultural history and the interwar history of Eastern Europe.
Manuel Férez Gil is a doctoral student at the University Alberto Hurtado in Santiago de Chile and has taught classes and courses on the Middle East and the Caucasus at various universities in Mexico and Chile. His areas of research are the ethnic and religious minorities of the Middle East and the Caucasus. Previously, he coordinated the Jean Monnet Chair in European studies at the International University of Cuernavaca, Mexico.