This week for our Get to know SPPO segment, we spoke with GTA Eleni Christodulelis. 

 

Have you ever sat back and thought, “How do those graduate students do it?” Well, for a prime example of balancing a PhD program and personal interests, look no further than Eleni Christodulelis, a PhD student in Hispanic Linguistics. Eleni’s passion for language was born from growing up in Arcadia, California. Besides learning Greek as a first language, she also lived in an area of the country where there is a high Hispanic population. Her interest continued to grow, and now she works on morphosyntactic variation and pragmatics in both Spanish and Portuguese. Her studies help answer questions about why speakers say something a certain way when there’s another way to say it, and she is currently focused on the pragmatic meaning of definite articles with people’s names.

 

Moving to Columbus almost three years ago was a big step for Eleni, but joining the congregation at The Annunciation Greek Orthodox Cathedral made the transition easier. Every year at the Greek Festival, she performs folk dances and songs from all over Greece for festival-goers. Eleni has a long personal history of folk dance and song and has participated in song and dance troupes since the age of six. Her love of music is also expressed by her strong preference for musicals, especially Rogers and Hammerstein.

 

One of Eleni’s fondest memories while studying Spanish is getting to spend Semana Santa (Holy Week) in Sevilla, Spain. She often recalls marveling at the scale of the music and pageantry during the celebrations. But despite a love affair with the Spanish-speaking world and her Greek heritage, Eleni’s favorite food is Xiaolongbao, a traditional Chinese pork dumpling. Who knew?