Nora Melnikova

Nora Melnikova works as a Lecturer of Hindi language and literature in the Department of South & Southeast Asian Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. She studied Hindi, Sanskrit, and Teaching Czech as a Foreign Language in Czech Republic and Germany. From 2007, she taught Czech language and literature at Delhi University and Hindi language and literature, and Theravada Buddhism at Charles University in Prague. At present, her research focuses on Second language teaching; she is working on bidirectional transfer in Hindi speakers with Czech as a second language. Her other areas of interest are Religious Studies, in particular modern Theravada Buddhism, and Early Modern languages and literature in North India. She translated Mirabai poems and Erich Frauwallner's History of Indian Philosophy into Czech. Her publications include "Hindi textbooks and Communicative Language Teaching in Central Europe," "Mirabai – a saint or a rebel", and "Vipassana – an ancient Buddhist tradition or a modern school of meditation".