Gemma Taylor graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2021 with a major in Russian Literature and a minor in History. She studied Russian in Almaty, Kazakhstan in 2019 and in Almaty and Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan in 2022 on scholarships from the UCLA Russian Flagship program. Her academic interests include Central Asian national identity building in the post–Soviet era through the promotion of national literatures and indigenous symbols.