Emily Finer

I work on transnational and multilingual interactions between English, Polish, Ukrainian, Yiddish and Russian language cultures. In addition to teaching in the Department of Russian, I was the founding convenor of the degree in Comparative Literature which brings together all the languages and cultures taught in the School of Modern Languages at St Andrews. I currently hold a St Andrews / Emory Collaborative Grant for a project researching multilingual children’s print culture of Ukraine and am joint PI on the Ostroh Academy/University of St Andrews Partnership for Advancing the Public Humanities funded by UUKi.

My second research focus is on intersections between global science fiction, exoplanet science, and space policy. I am PI for a STAIRS grant ‘Forecasting Reproduction in Space’ which asks whether science fiction and scientific papers address similar issues around reproduction and agency and investigates the techniques used in literary and scientific writing to communicate complex ethical issues. This follows my earlier research and monograph on Viktor Shklovskii, a literary theorist who aimed to make literary analysis more scientific. I am Co-Director of an interdisciplinary research centre: St Andrews Centre for Exoplanet Science and content advisor to the exhibition Alien Worlds at the Wardlaw Museum, St Andrews.

I have been an interviewee and researcher on The Cultural Front (BBC Radio 4), The Sunday Feature (BBC Radio 3), the Red Mars Series (BBC Radio 4), and In Our Time with Melvyn Bragg (BBC Radio 4).