Alessandro Achilli received a PhD from the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Milan (2015) with a dissertation on the poetry of Vasyl Stus and its Ukrainian, German and Russian intertexts. His research interests include Ukrainian, Russian, Polish and German poetry, comparative literature, and literary theory. While at HURI, Achilli will research "Neomodernism in Ukrainian Poetry of the Second Half of the 20th Century."