Dr. Eric Metz was born in Hasselt (Belgium) in 1971. He studied Slavic philology and comparative literature at the University of Ghent. His doctoral dissertation, which he defended in 2004, was devoted to the the poetics of the Russian symbolist poet and literary translator Konstantin Bal’mont. As a researcher and lecturer, he was affiliated resp. to the University of Ghent, the Université Libre de Bruxelles, and the Artesis University College in Antwerp. Ever since 2011, he is an assistant professor of translation studies and Slavic studies at the University of Amsterdam. His main areas of research are West- and East Slavonic literatures from the viewpoint of translation and other forms of interliterary contact. As of September 2023, he is conducting a research project at ARTES about the translation activities of the Ukrainian writer and ‘Kultuträger’ Ivan Franko (1856-1916). In addition to his academic work, Eric translates poetry and short stories into Dutch from Czech, Polish, Ukrainian, Russian, and Belarusian.