Dr. Olesya Serkina

Dr. Olesya V. Serkina obtained a Degree of Kandidat* of Philological Sciences in Germanic languages in 2000, after defending her dissertation on absolute constructions in Modern English from the perspective of co-reference. From 1995 till 2000 she worked at the Chair of the English Philology and taught English to students majoring in English. Then in 2000, with a new Chair of Business Foreign Languages being set up at Belgorod State University, she accepted a position of Associate Professor of English at this new Chair and since then she has been working there, teaching English and Business English to students majoring in World Economy. Besides, she delivers lectures on Area Studies and History of the English Language to English majors and consults five-year students on their diploma papers in linguistics.

While working at the university in different years she acted as an editor of the Collection of linguistic articles (Vol.7), annually published in Belgorod State University, an organizer of the First Students’ Linguistic Conference and other events in her students’ life.

At present she also gives English classes to the faculty at BelSU who want to improve their English.

She is a member of the Russian Association of Cognitive Linguistics.

In 2002/2003 she spent a year in the US as a Junior Faculty Development Program Fellow (the program run by the American Council and sponsored by the Department of State) with the University of Texas at Austin where she was conducting her research and observing how English and other business languages were taught to students.

Dr. Serkina was born in Polyarny, Murmansk region, in a family of a military officer. In 1990 she moved with her family to Belgorod where she resides at the moment. She is not married, and besides teaching which takes a major part of her time, she likes gardening, traveling, reading, needlework and other creative activities.

*Kandidat is the holder of the first higher degree, awarded on dissertation in Russia and the CIS. To obtain this degree a person after completing a 5-year university course, should take a 3-year course of post-graduate studies. The next and last higher degree possible is Doctor, which can be awarded after 3-5 years of working on the dissertation.

Back to Main Page