Stanford University Libraries Welcomes New Slavic Curator

This coming September, Margarita Nafpaktitis will join Stanford University Libraries as the new Curator for Slavic and East European Collections. Margarita comes to Stanford from UCLA, where she has been Librarian for Slavic and East European Studies, Librarian for Linguistics, Research Library Instruction Coordinator (2011-2016) and Interim Western European Studies Librarian (2015-2016). Prior to beginning her position at UCLA, she was an Assistant Professor of Slavic and East European Studies at the University of Virginia (2004-2011). 

Nafpaktitis holds a PhD in Slavic Languages and Literatures from the University of Michigan (2003), and two Master's degrees, in Russian Literature and in Slavic and East European Area Studies, from The Ohio State University (1994). She is currently the chair of the Subcommittee on Digital Projects and on the executive board of the Committee on Library and Information Resources of the Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES, 2014-2016), and an inaugural member of the advisory board of the ASEEES Digital Humanities Affiliate Group (2016). She has published articles on Russian literature and graphic arts of the 1920s and translations of Polish contemporary fiction, essays, plays and poetry. 

Outside of work, Margarita enjoys spending time reading and translating, developing her skills in book arts (design, hand binding, letterpress), sewing (avidly and optimistically, if not always successfully), and cooking vegetarian-friendly versions of Greek, Russian and Polish cuisine.