Paulina Bren is a professor at Vassar College in New York, where she teaches international studies, gender, and media. She is the author of a prize-winning book about soap operas and communism behind the Iron Curtain and co-editor of a collection on consumerism in the Eastern Bloc. Born in the former Czechoslovakia, Paulina spent her childhood in the U.K. before moving to the United States.

She attended Wesleyan University as an undergraduate, later receiving an M.A. in International Studies from the University of Washington and a Ph.D. in History from New York University. She has held a host of research grants and fellowships, including residencies in Berlin, Budapest, Vienna, and Atlanta. She currently lives in the Bronx with her husband and daughter.