Olive Coles graduated Summa Cum Laude from the University of Pennsylvania in 2023 with degrees in Russian and East European Studies and Political Science. Originally from London, U.K., her research explores the intersection of language, aesthetics, and power in Soviet and post-Soviet contexts, concentrating most pertinently upon symbolic and poetic modes of self-definition, memorialisation, and resistance to modern-day Putinism and Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine. As an undergraduate, Olive spent time in the renewable energy sector — working with developing U.S. carbon sequestration technologies and researching aspects of sustainable development at the NGO level in Kyrgyzstan. She was also an undergraduate Research Fellow at the Wolf Centre for Humanities, and research assistant at the Penn Identity and Conflict Lab. Upon her graduation from the University of Pennsylvania, she received the Luba Zinkowsky Friedman Fund Prize for Excellence in Russian Studies.
At Harvard, she is the Imperiia Project Innovation Fellow and works as RA for the department of Slavic Languages and Literatures.