Andrew Kirkpatrick is originally from Baltimore, Maryland. He graduated from Georgetown University in 2018 with a B.A. in Russian Language and Literature. There Andrew wrote and defended an Honors Thesis on Russian poetry, specifically the cycle of poems at the end of the novel Dr. Zhivago. He is a lover of music and plays drums, piano, guitar, upright bass and sings. He has been working as a Grant Specialist for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops for the Church in Central and Eastern Europe since 2018. He traveled to Rome, Hungary, Romania, Serbia, Croatia, Poland, Austria, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan with work. Typically, he would take 2-3 month long trips per year in the region. He also lived and studied in Russia from 2016 to 2017 at St. Petersburg State University. 

At Georgetown, he is most interested in exploring how culture defines/informs ethnic divisions in countries in the regions–more specifically, how people in the Eurasian, Russian and Eastern European region define and relate to ‘the Other.’ This is a particularly interesting topic to explore from the literary, poetic and even religious perspective.