Nina De Bettin Padolin is a Ph.D. candidate in American literature and a project assistant at the Institute of American Studies at the University of Graz. Her dissertation explores ecocritical theater with a focus on planetarity and indigenous ecological knowledges. During the academic year 2020/2021, she served as a foreign language teaching assistant at Washington and Lee University in Virginia. In November 2021, she was awarded the "Talentförderungsprämie" (a stipend geared towards recognizing young talents) by the state of Upper Austria in the category "cultural studies and the humanities." She graduated from the University of Graz with a joint master's degree in English and American studies with honors and a master's degree in interdisciplinary gender studies.