Maria Engström is Professor of Russian at Uppsala University, Sweden. Her research focuses on Russian intellectual history, late Soviet underground culture, queer Russian visual culture and contemporary Russian conservatism. She co-editedThe Oxford Handbook of Soviet Underground Culture, Oxford University Press (2024) andDigital Orthodoxy: Mediating Post-Secularity in Russia(2015). She is co-editor-in-chief of the journalSlovo. Journal of Slavic Languages, Literatures and Cultures. Her recent research projects, supported by Swedish Research Council and the Foundation for Baltic and East European Studies, examine the formation of Russian civilizational discourse and the aesthetics of Neo-Reaction.

Aleksei Semenenko is Associate Professor in Russian at the Department of Language Studies at Umeå University. He holds a PhD in Russian Literature from Stockholm University. He is the author ofRussian Translations ofHamletand Literary Canon Formation(Stockholm University, 2007),The Texture of Culture: An Introduction to Yuri Lotman's Semiotic Theory(Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), and the editor ofSatire and Protest in Putin's Russia(Palgrave Macmillan, 2021) andAksenov and the Environs(with Lars Kleberg; Södertörn University, 2012). He has published works on translation, literature and semiotics and cultural recycling.