Beyond research

Here are some things I (used to) do beyond strictly academic work. 


Linguistic Olympiads

I helped to found the International Linguistic Olympiad and participated in its organization (as a member of the Program committee, the Jury and the Organizing committee) until 2011. I also participated in the organization of some other contests in linguistics in Russia, inter alia, the Traditional Linguistic Olympiad. 

My home country also has its own Latvian Linguistics Olympiad now, and since I am not (and have not been) involved in the organization, I feel free to say it's a very good one.

For eight years I was collaborating with a popular-science portal Elementy. Every month we published an interesting linguistic problem (of the Olympic type) with a detailed solution and an afterword about the relevant phenomena (the project continues, but another editor has been in charge since January 2019). In 2021, this collaboration resulted in a book. 


Science communication 

After graduation, I worked for two years (2007-2009) as Science Editor/Writer in Moscow, first at Lenta.ru (for those who know a thing or two about Russian media: obviously, that was the "old" Lenta, before the 2014 takeover), then at Russian Newsweek. 

One of my articles in Newsweek (about predictive genetic testing) got a first prize on a contest organized by the Ministry of Education and Moscow State University.

I also write articles sometimes for the aforementioned Elementy.


Media appearances

Here are some occasions when I appeared in the media as a newsmaker and not as a journalist:


Translations

I worked as a technical translator/interpreter for some time. In 2005-2006, I attended Alexandra Borisenko's and Victor Sonkin's seminar on literary translation, which resulted in the following translations from English to Russian:

I also translated a short story from Swedish: