REEEC Welcomes Bulgarian Studies Scholar and BridgeUSA Fellow

Iliyana Dimitrova is Senior Lecturer in Contemporary Bulgarian Language at the University of Veliko Tarnovo St. Cyril and St. Methodius in Bulgaria and an Adjunct Senior Lecturer in the Department of Slavic Languages & Literatures at the University of Illinois in academic year 2025-2026. She was selected in a nationwide competition to be the inaugural instructor in Bulgarian language and culture by Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Bulgaria. In the B term of this semester she is teaching Introduction to Bulgarian and Bulgarian for Heritage Speakers and in Spring 2026 she will teach a course on Bulgarian culture. Her presence on campus is part of the Bulgarian Studies Initiative, sponsored by the Republic of Bulgaria and jointly organized by REEEC and Slavic.

 

Oleksandr Kovrov joins the REEEC community as a BridgeUSA fellow from mid-October to mid-November. He is a professor in the Department of Ecology and Technologies of Environmental Protection at the Dnipro University of Technology in Ukraine. While at Illinois, he will work with Professor Prasanta Kalita of the Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering in the College of ACES. Professor Kovrov’s interests include environmental engineering, phytoremediation and land reclamation, air pollution control, and wastewater treatment technologies. The BridgeUSA program builds links between Ukrainian and U.S. scholars for long-term collaboration and is sponsored by the U.S. Department of State. Professor Kovrov is the fourth BridgeUSA scholar to visit the University of Illinois in the last two years.