Izolda Savenkova

Izolda (Iza) Savenkova is is a Ph.D. student in the Applied Linguistics and Language Education program at the University of Maryland, College Park. She holds a Master’s Degree in Second Language Acquisition with a specialization in Teaching Russian as a Foreign Language from Lomonosov Moscow State University. Her research interests include second language acquisition, world language teaching and learning, implementing DEIA in the Russian language classroom, and experiences of multilingual learners (MLs) with disabilities. She is also a co-author (with Alyssa DeBlasio, Dickinson College) of the student-centered, inquiry-based textbook Pro-dvizhenie: Advanced Russian through Film and Media (Georgetown University Press, 2022), designed to build Advanced-level Russian proficiency. Prior to joining the PhD program at the UMD, she taught all levels of Russian at Dickinson College (PA) and Columbia University (NY). Since 2018, she has served as a regular summer faculty member at the Middlebury College Kathryn Davis School of Russian.