Dr. Brent Mai, Dean of the Carpenter Library and Director of the Volga German Institute at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville, will provide lectures and discussions each day about Volga German history and culture. He has spoken world-wide on many topics related to Volga German history and culture. Dr. Mai, whose father’s side is Volga German, grew up in Western Kansas, graduated from Bethany College in Lindsborg, and continued graduate studies at George Washington University, the University of Texas at Austin, and Vanderbilt University.
Dr. Mila Koretnikov, whose mother’s Volga German family was deported to Siberia in 1941, is a lecturer in cross-cultural communication at the Cooperative University of Baden-Württemberg in Karlsruhe, Germany, and a teacher of Business English at Hochschule für Technik und Wirtschaft in Karlsruhe, Germany. She has also spoken world-wide on the subject of Volga German culture and history, and serves on behalf of the Volga German Institute as a lead researcher and translator for interactions with Russian archives. Dr. Koretnikov grew up in Russia and holds degrees from Saratov State University. She did post-doc study at the University of Wyoming.
Volga German Tour to Germany in 2023 